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Distinguish Between Duty and Anxiety, and May our Character and Not Our Circumstance Chiefly Engage Us!

March 7, 2020 3:43 am

Get up every morning know that time is moving forward and God is manifesting your dreams. I do not want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. It comes to us at midnight very clean. When it arrives, it is perfect, and it puts itself in our hands and hopes we have learned something from yesterday. A result of human’s vulnerability to death and one’s symbolic consciousness of it is the struggle to get power to fortify oneself. Other beings must simply use those powers that nature provided them with and the neural circuits that animate those powers. However, humans can invent and imagine powers, and they can invent ways to protect power. This means that all the moral categories are power categories; they are not about virtue in any abstract sense. Purity, goodness, rightness—these are ways of keeping power in tact so as to cheat death; the striving for protection is a way of qualifying for extra special immunity not only in this World but in others to come. Hence all categories of dirt, filth, imperfection, and error are vulnerability categories, power problems. For young children Band-Aids are already an obsessive religion that sets the whole tone of it: cleanliness is safety. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

So we see that as an organism humans are fated to perpetuate oneself and as a conscious organism one is fated to identify evil as the threat to that perpetuation. In the same way, one is driven to individuate oneself as an organism, to develop one’s own peculiar talents and personality. An what, then, would be the highest development and use of those talents? To contribute to the struggle against evil, of course. In other words, humans are fated to consider this Earth as a theater for heroism, and one’s life as a vehicle for heroic acts which aim precisely to transcend evil. Each person wants to have one’s life make a difference in the life of humankind, contribute in some way toward securing and furthering that life, make it in some ways less vulnerable, more durable. To be a true hero is to triumph over diseases and things like the Coronavirus, want, death. If it has been able to being real benefits to life of human kind, one knows that one’s life has gad vital human meaning. And so people have always honoured their heroes, especially in religion, medicine, science, diplomacy, and way. Here is where heroism has been most easily identifiable. From Constantine and Christ to Harriet Tubman and De Gaulle, people have called their heroes “saviours” in the literal sense: those who have delivered them from the evil of the termination of life, either of their own immediate lives or of the duration of their people. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Even more, by one’s own death the hero secures the lives of others, and so the greatest heroic sacrifice is the sacrifice of the god for one’s people. We see this in Columbus, Christ, Robert E. Lee, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The giants died to secure humankind; by their blood we are saved. It is almost pathetically logical how humans, the supremely vulnerable beings, developed the cult of logic. However, if we add together the logic of the heroic with the necessary fetishization of evil, we get a formula that is no longer pathetic but terrifying. It explains almost all by itself why humans, of all beings, have caused the most devastation on Earth—the most real evil. Humans struggle extra hard to be immune to death because they alone are conscious of it, as far as we know; but by being able to identify and isolate evil arbitrarily, they are capable of lashing out in all directions against imagined dangers of this World. This means that in order to live one is capable of bringing a large part of the World down around their shoulders. History is just such a testimonial to the frightening costs of heroism. The hero is the one who can go out and get added powers by killing an enemy and taking one’s talismans or one’s scalp or eating one’s heart. Humans become a walking repository of accrued powers. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Animals can only take in food for power; humans can literally take in the trinkets and bodies of one’s whole World, like we saw in the film Neon Demon. Furthermore, the hero proves one’s power by winning in battle; one shows that one is also favoured by the gods. Also, one can appease the gods by offering to them the sacrifice of the stranger. The hero is, then, the one who accrues power by one’s acts, and who placates invisible powers by one’s expiations. One terminates those who threaten their group, one incorporates their powers to further protect one’s group, one sacrifices others to gain immunity for one’s group. In a word, one becomes a saviour through blood. From the head-hunting and charm-hunting of the primitives to the holocaust of Adolf Hitler, the dynamic is the same: the heroic victory over evil by a traffic in pure power. And the aim is the same: purity, goodness, righteousness—immunity. Hitler Youth were recruited on the basis of idealism; the nice boy next door is the one who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima; the idealistic communist is the one who sided with Stalin against one’s former comrades: terminate to protect the heroic revolution, to assure the victory over evil. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

The ending of a life is sometimes distasteful, but the distaste is swallowed if it is necessary to true heroism: as one of the revolutionaries asked Pyotr Verhovensky in The Possessed, when they were about to end the life of one of their number, “Are other groups also doing this?” In other words, is it the socially heroic thing to do, or are we being arbitrary about identifying evil? Each person wants one’s life to be a marker for goo as one’s group defines it. Humans work their programs of heroism according to the standard of cultural scenarios, from Pontius Pilate through Eichmann and Calley. People cause evil out of good intentions, not out of wicked ones. People cause evil by wanting heroically to triumph over it, because humans are a frightened being who tries to triumph, a being who will not admit one’s own insignificance, that one cannot perpetuate oneself and one’s group forever, that no one is invulnerable no matter how much of the blood of others is spilled to try to demonstrate it. Another way of summing up this whole matter is to contrast evil out of good intentions, but the idea that evil is as a fatality for humans, forever locked in the human heart and soul. This is what gives some psychiatrists, such as Dr. Freud, such a dim view of the future of humans. Many eyes looked to a man of his greatness for a prophecy on human possibilities, but he refused to pose as the magician-seer and give people the false prediction. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

And it is possible that some people do have evil locked in their souls and hearts, and they like to torture and end the life of those who are beautiful and kind because it reduces the competition and it is fun to them see others suffer. As Dr. Freud reported in a late writing: “I have not the courage to rise up before my fellow-humans as a prophet, and I bow to their reproach that I can offer them no consolation.” This is a heavy confession by one of history’s greatest students of humans; but I am citing it not for its honesty or humility, but because of the reason for its pathos. The future of humans was problematic for Dr. Freud because of the instincts that have drive humans and will supposedly always drive them. As he put it, right after the above admission and at the very end of his book: “The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent [it] will succeed in mastering the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction.” The most that humans can seem to do is to put a veneer of civilization and reason over this instinct; but the problem of evil is “born afresh with every child,” as Dr. Freud wrote three years earlier, in 1927, and it takes the form of precise instinctual wishes—incest, lust for ending the life of another, cannibalism. This was human’s repugnant heritage, a heritage that one seems forever destined to work upon the World. From crooked wood of which humans are made, nothing quite straight can be built. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Yet today we know that Dr. Freud was wrong about evil. Humans are a crooked wood all right, but not in the way that Dr. Freud thought. This is a crucial difference because it means that we do not have to follow Dr. Freud on the exact grounds of his feelings for the problematic of the human future. If, instead, we follow Rank and the general science of humans, we get quite different picture of the oldest “instinctual wishes.” Incents is an immortality motive, it symbolizes the idea of self-fertilization—the defeat of biology and the fatality of species propagation. For the child in the family it may be an identity motive, a way of immediately becoming an individual and stepping out of the collective role of obedient child by breaking up the family ideology. Historically, the brother-sister marriage of ancient kings like the Pharaohs must have been a way of preserving and increasing the precious mana power that the king possessed. Cannibalism, it is true, has often been motivated by sheer appetite for meat, the pleasures of incorporation of a purely sensual kind, quite free of any spiritual overtones. However, as just noted, much of the time the motive is one of mana power. Which largely explains why cannibalism becomes uniformly repugnant to humans when the spirit-power beliefs that sustained it are left behind; if it were a matter of instinctual appetite, it would be more tenacious. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

And as for the lust for ending a life, this too, we now know, is largely a psychological problem; it is not primarily a matter of the satisfaction of vicious animal aggression. We know that people often end life of others with appetite and excitement, as well as real dedication, but this is only logical for animals who are born hunters and who enjoy the feeling of maximizing their organismic powers at the expense of a rapped and helpless prey. If a covenant be made, wherein neither of the parties perform presently, but trust one another; in the condition of mere nature, (which is a condition of war of every person against every person,) upon any reasonable suspicion, it is void; but if there be a common power set over them both, with right and force sufficient to compel performance; it is not void. For one that performs first, has no assurance the other will perform after; because the bonds of words are too weak to bridle means ambition, avarice, anger, and other passions, without the fear of some coercive power; which in the condition of mere nature, where all people are equal, and judges of the justness of their own fears cannot possibly be supposed. And therefore one which performs first, does but betray oneself to one’s enemy; contrary to the right (one can never abandon) of defending one’s life, and means living. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

However, in a civil estate, where there is a power set up to constrain those that would otherwise violate their faith, that fear is no more reasonable; and for that cause, one which by the covenant is to perform first, is obliged so to do. The cause of fear, which makes such a covenant invalid, must be always something arising after the covenant made; as some new fact, or other sign of the will not to perform; else it cannot make the covenant void. For that which could not hinder a person from promising, ought not to be admitted as a hindrance of performing. One that transfers any right, transfers the means of enjoying it, as far as posses in one’s power. As one that sells land, is understood to transfer the herbage, and whatsoever grows upon it; nor can one that sells a mill turn away the stream that drives it. And they that give to a being The Right of government in Sovereignty, are understood to give one the right of levying money to maintain soldiers; and of appointing magistrates for the administration of justice. To make a covenant with bruit beats, is impossible; because not understanding our speech, they understand not, nor accept of any translation of right; nor can translate any right to another; and without mutual acceptation, there is no covenant. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Love does not harm to anyone. However, suppose that were all we knew about love. Suppose we did not have the Ten Commandments, from which Paul quoted in verse 9: “’Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet.’” If we did not have those specific directions, how would be know what it means to harm one’s neighbour? Most of us are familiar to some degree with the classic description of love given by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13.4-7: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trust, always hopes, always perseveres. Paul did not give a dictionary definition of love; instead, he described it in terms of specific attitudes and actions toward one another. What are these attitudes and actions? They are nothing more than various expressions of the moral law of God. However, no doubt the later Paul who wrote these words was very sure that whatever spiritual formation in Christlikeness he had received might be overwhelmed. There remained in him a spark of evil that could be fanned into a flame were he not watchful or if God did not continuously direct and uphold him in every dimension of his nature. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Paul knew he was running a race, as you and I are. That race will not be over until we pass into God’s full World. No doubt he had in his lifetime seen many falter and fail, many who would not be able to say at the end, as he did, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith,” reports 2 Timothy 4.7. The image of the athlete was strong and ever-present in Paul’s World and in his own mind. He knew that you had to keep yourself in spiritual shape to finish and finish well. In 1 Corinthians 9 he discussed how he therefore conducted himself in his course of life, how he exercised and treated his body severely, making it his slave (not he its slave), “lest possibly, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified,” reports 1 Corinthians 9.27. The valid point in “miserable sinner” Christianity is correctly expressed in these well-chosen words by St. Augustine: If anyone supposes that with humans, living, as one still does, in this mortal life, it may be possible for him to dispel and clear off every obscurity induced by corporeal and carnal fancies, and to attain to the serenest light of immutable truth, and to cleave constantly and unswervingly to this with a mind wholly estranged from the course of this present life, that humans understand neither what one asks, nor who one is that is putting such a supposition. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

If ever the soul is helped to reach beyond the cloud by which all the Earth is covered, that is to say, beyond this carnal darkness with which the whole terrestrial life is covered, it is simply as if he were touched with a swift coruscation, only to sink back into his natural infirmity, the desire surviving by which one may again be raised to the heights, but one purity being insufficient to establish one there. The more, however, anyone can do this, the greater is one; while the less one can do so the less one is. In the spiritual life one never rests on one’s laurels. It is a sure recipe for falling. Attainments are like the manna given to the Israelites in the desert, good only for the day (Exodus 16.4,20). Past attainments not place us in a position of merit that permits us to let up in the hot pursuit of God for today, for now. Paul knew that, and he knew that others missed it or forgot it to their great harm. We deserve nothing before God, no matter how far we have advanced, and we are never out of danger. As long as we are “at home in the body,” as reported in 2 Corinthians 5.6, we still just recovering sinners. And in these respects, though only in these respects, do we remain as wicked as anyone else—Mother Teresa as Adolf Hitler. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

However, to distort this important truth into a claim that we can never really change, and especially in our hearts, is to substitute a glaring and harmful falsehood for liberating and life-blessing truth. And that distortion, which sometimes is a true expression of genuine humility, can also be done by those who wish to take themselves off he hook, to enjoy remaining the same in their inner life. It is not easy to really want to be different. As my personal understanding of the interior life has developed, I have learned that apart from the well-known Scriptural calls to prayer, there are two great human reasons we ought to pray. The first is because of what prayer does to our character. Prayer is like a time exposure to God. Our souls function like photographic plates, and Christ’s shining image is the light. The more we expose our lives to the white-hot Sun of His righteous life (for, say, five, ten, fifteen, thirty minutes, or an hour a day), the more His truth, His integrity, His humility. As we have seen, this was true of General William Harrison, who maintained a disciplined devotional life for over seventy years. People say his presence brought a distinct sense of Christ. The second corresponding reason is that prayer bends our wills to God’s will. If I throw out the anchor to my yacht, and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore. Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

What tantalizing personal benefits are offered by time spent in the presence of God in prayer! Herein is possessed the spiritual desolation of our days. The open secret of many Christian Bible-believing churches is that a vanishing small percentage of those talking about prayer are actually doing that they actually talking about. Leviticus 19 is basically an amplification of the Ten Commandments as originally set forth in Exodus 20. Let us consider verses 11-18 of Leviticus 19: “Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another. Do no swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the LORD. Do not defraud your neighbour or rob him or her. Do not hold back the wages of a hired being overnight. Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD. Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favouritisim to the great, but judge your neighbour fairly. Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbour’s life. I am the LORD. Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbour frankly so you will not share in one’s guilt. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Now, let us paraphrase those verses using the format “Love does not,” which Paul used in 1 Corinthians 13. When we do this, the passage from Leviticus 19 reads as follows: Love does not steal, it does not lie, it does not deceive. Love does not profane God’s name. It does not defraud nor rob its neighbour. It does not hold the wages of a hired being overnight. Love does not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block in front of the blind. Loves does not pervert justice, nor show partiality to the poor or favouritism to the great. Instead, it judges is neighbour fairly. Loves does not slander another, nor do anything that endangers one’s life. Loved does not hate its brother, nor seek revenge, nor bear a grudge, but rather treats its neighbour as itself. We can see from the paraphrase that the various expression of God’s moral law, wherever they occur in Scripture, are simply a description of love in action. Leviticus 19 also helps us understand who our neighbour is. One is the hired person, the def, the blind, the less affluent, the great, the person whom we are tempted to lie to, or steal from, or slander. One is the person who has wronged us and against whom we are tempted to hold a grudge. Our neighbour is even the person whose life we might endanger by reckless behaviour. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

We can easily say our neigbour is anyone with whom we come in contact. However, because of our human frailty and our tendency to have moral blind spots, it is helpful to think in terms of specific situations. He principle of love is not a higher principle over God’s moral law. Rather, it provides the motive and the motivation for obedience, while the law provides the direction for the biblical expression of love. If they were not motivated by love for both God and our neighbour, the actions prescribed by God’s law would be hollow indeed. I would much rather do business with someone who wanted to treat me fairly because one loved me than someone who deals fairly only because “it is good for business.” I would also want one’s love to be guided by the moral and ethical principles of the Christian Bible. Some people fail to attend church and read less because they are not spiritually sensitive and as open as others. Also, many people are dominated by the time crunching production ethic of the marketplace, which makes them feel lightyears away from deep prayer and reading of the Christian Bible. However, most fail because they simply do not know how to go about cultivating the disciplines of the interior spiritual life. One’s prayer and devotional life cannot be reduced to a few simple rules. These areas of spiritual experience are far too dynamic and personal for simplistic reduction. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

We must also be cautioned against imagining from the outline we are using (deep prayer, confession, adoration, submission, petition) that there is a prescribed order for devotion, for there is not and never has been. Life’s rhythms sometimes demand that we launch directly, for example, into petition with “Lord, help me!” Other times will be spent almost entirely in confession, or meditation, or adoration. God’s Word is essential to developing a Christian mind. All Christians and Catholics, no matter what denomination or faith should be systematically reading through the Bible, once a year if possible, so that our minds are being perpetually programmed by the data of Scripture. This understood, there is yet another step: intersession—which is like a marathon of prayer, where you bare your entire soul to God, all your concerns, praise, and dreams for the future and personalizing and internalizing the Word of the Lord. “And now I, Nephi, do not make a fully account of the things which my father hath written, for he hath written many things which he saw in visions and in dreams; and he also hath written many things which he prophesied and spake unto his children, of which I shall not make a full account. But I shall make an account of my proceedings in my days. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

“Behold, I make an abridgment of the record of my father (Lehi), upon plates which I have made with mine own hands; wherefore, after I have abridged the record of my Father then will I make an account of my own life. Therefore, I would that ye should know, that after the Lord had shown so many marvelous things unto my father, Lehi, yea, concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, behold he went forth among the people, and began to prophesy and to declare unto them concerning the things which he had both seen and heard. And it came to pass that the Jews did mock him because of he things which he testified of them; for he truly testified of their wickedness and their abominations; and he testified that the things which he saw and heard, and also the things which he read in the book, manifested plainly of the coming of a Messiah, and also the redemption of the World. And when the Jews heard these things they were angry with him; yes, even as with the prophets of old, whom they had cast out, and stoned, and slain; and they might take it away. However, behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make the mighty even unto the power of deliverance,” reports 1 Nephi 1.16-20. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Grant, O Lord, that Thy family, devoted to Thy service, and confiding in Thy protection, may obtain the blessing which they humbly implore; that being at rest under Thy defense, they may not be left destitute of assistance for this life, and may be prepared for the good things which are eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O Thou Most High, it becomes me to be low in thy presence. I am nothing compared with thee; I possess not the rank and power of Angels, but Thou hast made me what I am, and placed me where I am; help me to acquiesce in thy sovereign pleasure. I thank thee that in the embryo state of my endless being I am capable by grace of improvement; that I can bear thy image, not by submissiveness, but by design, and can work with thee and advance thy cause and glory. But, alas, the crown has fallen from my head: I have sinned; I am alien to thee; my head is deceitful and wicked, my mind an enemy of Thy law. Yet, in my lostness Thou hast laid help in the mighty one and one comes between to put one’s hands on us both, my umpire, daysman, mediator, whose blood is my peace, whose righteousness is my strength, whose condemnation is my freedom, whose Spirit is my power, whose Heaven is my heritage. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Grant that I may feel more the strength of Thy grace in subduing the evil of my nature, in loosing me from the present evil World, in supporting me under the trials of life, in enabling me to abide with thee in my valleys, in exercising me to have conscience void of offense before thee and before humans. In my affairs may I distinguish between duty and anxiety, and may my character and not my circumstance chiefly engage me. “I would be very happy to oblige you, if my passes were respected. But the fact is, sir, I have, within he last two years, given passes to two hundred and fifty thousand men to go to Richmond, and not one had got there yet.” (President Lincoln’s answer to man who asked for a safe conduct to Richmond, 1863.) I distrust the legends which are told about most gurus by the disciples. They exaggerate because they have stopped seeking truth. When a person turns belief in the superior knowledge of the guide into belief in the virtual omniscience of the guide, it is dangerous. After having charted all the merits and capacities of the enlightened person, one’s devotees and disciples easily fall into exaggerations and forgets one’s limitations, or ignore the simple fact that one remains a human among humans. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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God, the Creator of the Universe, Will Thrust You Further and do More than You Can Even think or Ask!

March 5, 2020 3:09 am

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work, second, consistently, third, common sense. Some people dream of worthy accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them. Somehow I cannot believe that there are any heights that cannot be scaled by a person who knows the secrets of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C’s. They are curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy; and the greatest of all confidence. Adult learning is a changed relationship between the central effects of separate stimulations. Two sets of events, which are separately experienced on two unconnected occasions, can become associated. It is possible to begin to imagine how one might learn to recognize, for instance a bird, either though seeing and touching it, or through hearing it. Circular cell-assemblies are capable of reverberation. The association might be set up by vision, and yet be manifested later purely from hearing a sound, or feeling a touch. Any element can stand for the whole, and the whole can stand for any element. We catch here a glimpse of what is called conceptual learning or symbolic learning; learning through the use of the words and symbols. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

There is a possibility that a subsystem may act as a link between two systems (conceptual structures). The two systems have a subsystem connecting them, to provide a basis of prompt association. Thus, two concepts may acquire a latent association without ever having occurred together in the subject’s past experience. For instance, a person fears apple-picking and window-cleaning because these are associated with going up steps, and this is associated with some danger connected with being in an upstairs room. And so the experience of seeing something can be associated with something heard, or a word that is read may be associated with a picture or a sound. These can all stand for or means each other. The process of thinking must be rather like this—a sequence of central events which starts when one central activity is a stimulus for the next month, without need the intervention of a sensory stimulus. One of the most interesting epochs in human history is the so-called Neolithic revolution. That revolution accompanied the development of agriculture in Asia Minor about 10,000 years ago. It is very likely, although we have no proof as yet, that it was women who discovered agriculture, and what they discovered was that wild grasses could be raised and improved to yield edible what and other grains. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

The men were not so ingenious. In that same period, they were probably still hunting or were acquiring and caring for flocks of sheep. With the discovery of agriculture came the awareness that one’s food need be limited only to what nature provided of its own accord, but one could also take a creative hand in the natural process. Using one’s intelligence and skills, one could produce something. As I said, it happened only a short time ago. In the early years of this revolution—let us say in the first four thousand—you would no doubt have found remarkably peaceful societies, ones in many respects like those of the North American Pueblo Indians. They were probably even matriarchal in organization and inhabited small villages. They produced a little more than they needed at any given moment, and that surplus gave them added security and allowed their populations to grow. However, they did not have so much surplus that one group would envy another and want to take away its surplus. Neolithic society, like modern tribes I have just discussed here, was probably characterized by a genuinely democratic way of life and, as I said, by much stronger role for women and mothers. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Patriarchal organization came much later, about 4000 to 3000 B.C., a period in which everything changed. People were able to produce much more than they needed. Slavery was introduced. The division of labour became more pronounced. Armies were built up; governments were formed; wars were fought. Humans discovered that one could use other humans to work for them. Hierarchies formed, with kings at their heads. The kings were deputies of God and often filled the role of high priest. That situation encouraged the development of aggressiveness, for humans now had the ability to rob, steal, and exploit. And natural democracy gave way to a hierarchy in which everyone had to obey. Proponents of the instinct theory often claim that war is caused by human’s aggressive instincts. That is a very naïve as well as a very incorrect view. First of all, we know that most wars come about because governments convince their populations that they are under attack, that they have to defend their most sacred values, their lives, their freedom, democracy, and Lord knows what else. The wave of enthusiasm for war lasts a few weeks and then is pretty much gone. Now people have to be threatened and punished to continue fighting. However, if people were by nature so aggressive that war actually satisfied their aggressive instincts, then governments would not have to take those measures. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

On the contrary, they would have to propagandize for peace all the time so that people would not be constantly yearning for a war in which they could vent their aggression. However, as we all know, that is not the way things are, and we can even identify quite precisely the period when war as an institution had its beginnings or, if you will, was invented. It was the period after the Neolithic revolution, the period that saw he rise of city-state, of kings, of armies, and of the capability to make war, take slaves, steal treasure, and so forth. There was no organize war among the hunter-gatherers and the primitive agriculture peoples, because the capability for it simply did not exist. What this discussion shows us is that a number of primitive tribes have social systems in which friendliness and cooperation are predominant and aggression at a minimum. If that picture of primitive societies is correct, the “hydraulic” theory that identifies aggression as an instinct cannot be maintained. Another point we can cite against the instinct theory is that levels of aggression within a society can vary greatly. If we look at the early 1930s in Germany, for example, we find that the Nazis drew most of their support from the old petit-bourgeoisie and from officers and students whose careers had been disabled by postwar conditions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

The Nazis found no emotional echo in the middle class an upper middle class. I do not mean to say that those classes did not acquiesce in the Nazi system, but the ardent Nazis did not come from those classes, much less from the working class. Convinced Nazis were, as we all know, more the exception than the rule in the working classes, though, oddly enough, convinced anti-Nazis were also an exception among workers. Why that is so is another question altogether. We find a similar situation in the American South. In some cases, the less affluent people in the South have an incredible store of aggressiveness, typically much more than Southern middle class and more too than the working class either in the South or on the American East Coast. Aggressiveness is always most present in those classes that are on the lowest social level, at the bottom of the social pyramid. Those are people who have few pleasures in life, who are usually uneducated, who see themselves being slowly squeeze out of the social mainstream, who are lacking in motivation and interests. Such people build up vast amounts of sadistic rage that does not develop in people who are productively occupied an who feel fully engaged in—or at least not totally exclude from—the social process. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Those latter people, who are underrepresented and being pushes out of society, have interests; they have the feeling that they are in step with the rest of society. That is why those classes do not develop the same measure of sadism and aggression that the old petit—bourgeoisie in Germany did or that certain classes in American do. Levels of aggressiveness will differ in individuals, too. Take the patient who comes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doctor, I strongly dislike everybody. I do not care for my wife. I find my children unpleasant. I cannot stand the people I work with. There is nobody I actually like.” For the psychiatrist, and I would hope for almost anyone else, too, that patient has rendered one’s own diagnosis and declared oneself sick. We do not respond to such a person by saying, “But of course, everything is perfectly clear. We have here a case of the aggressive instinct at work.” We say instead that this man’s character is so constituted that it constantly produces aggression. We then ask: How did this person get this way? We inquire into the social circumstances of his life, his family history, his past experiences. We try to understand why such a high level of aggressiveness became part of this individual, part of one’s character structure. We do not say, as the advocates of the instinct theory say when they talk about war: “There is nothing you can do about it. This case just proves all over again how strong our inborn aggressiveness is.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

All of us know aggressive people, and by aggressive I do not mean just quick-tempered. I mean destructive, hostile, sadistic people. And we all know friendly people who strike us as being warm and nonaggressive not just on a superficial level but at their very core. Their friendliness cannot in any way be equated with weakness or servility. If we are unaware of such differences, then we are in a bad way—and many people are in a bad way, because they do no notice those differences. However, most people who take the trouble to look around them with any care know very well that those characterological differences exist. The contradiction between the guilt feelings that are manifested and the lack of that humility which should accompany them must be considered. The neurotic will make great demands for consideration and admiration and will also show a distinct unwillingness to accept the slightest degree of criticism. This contradiction may be glaringly obvious, as in the case of a woman who felt vaguely guilty of every crime reported in the papers, and even blamed herself for every death in the family, but was so overwhelmed by an acute outbreak of rage that she fainted when her sister rather mildly reproached her for requesting too much consideration. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

However, the contradiction is not always so conspicuous; it is present much more frequently than appears on the surface. The neurotic may mistake one’s self-accusatory attitude for a sound critical attitude toward oneself. One’s sensitivity toward criticism may be screened by a belief that one can take criticism very well, if only it is made in a friendly or constructive manner; but this belief is only a screen and is contradicted by the facts. Even obviously friendly advice may be reacted to with anger, for advice of any kind implies criticism for not being altogether perfect. Thus is guilt feelings are carefully examined and are tested for genuineness, it becomes apparent that much of what looks like feelings of guilt is the expression either of anxiety or of a defense against it. In part this holds true also for the normal individual. In our culture it is considered nobler to fear God than to fear people, or in non-religious terms, to refrain from something because of conscience rather than because of a fear of getting caught. Many a husband who pretends to be faithful because of his conscience is in reality merely afraid of his wife. Because of the great amount of anxiety in neuroses the neurotic in inclined more often than the normal individual to cover up anxiety with guilt feelings. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Unlike the normal person one not only fears those consequences which are likely to happen, but anticipates consequences which are likely to happen, but anticipates consequences utterly disproportionate to reality. The nature of these anticipations depends on the situation. One may have an exaggerated notion of impending punishment, retaliation, desertion, or one’s fears may be completely vague. However, whatever their nature one’s fears are all kindled at the same point, which may be roughly described as the fear of disapproval, or if the fear of disapproval amounts to a conviction, as a fear of being found out. The fear of disapproval is very common in neuroses. Nearly every neurotic, even though one appears on surface observation to be entirely certain of oneself and indifferent to the opinion of others, is excessively afraid of or hypersensitive to being disapproved of, criticized, accused, found out. As I have already mentioned, this fear of disapproval is usually understood to indicate underlying guilt feelings. In other words, it is considered to be a result of such feelings. Critical observation makes this conclusion questionable. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

In analysis a patient will often find it extremely difficult to talk about certain experiences or thoughts—those, for example, concerning death wishes, masturbation, incest wishes—because one believes one feels guilty. When one has gained sufficient confidence to talk about them, and recognizes that they do not meet with disapproval, the “guilt feelings” vanish. One feels guilty because, as a result of one’s anxieties, one is even more than others dependent on public opinion, and hence mistakes it naively as one’s own judgment. Furthermore one’s general sensitivity toward disapproval remains fundamentally unchanged, even if one’s special guilt feelings vanish after one has brought oneself to talk about the experiences that prompted them. This observation suggests the conclusion that guilt feelings are not the cause but the result of the fear of disapproval. “But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit,” reports 2 Corinthians 3.18. We have looked, now, at the basic dimensions of the human self and at the central principle of its dysfunctionality and corruption (that is, self-denial). Spiritual formation in Christ is the process by which one moves an is moved from self-worship to Christ-centered self-denial as a general condition of God’s present and eternal kingdom. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

The next logical step in a practical treatment of spiritual formation might seem to be the provision of detailed instructions on how to move from a life of self-adulation to one of self-denial, dealing with each of the dimensions of the human being in turn. And we plan to do just that. However, before it can be effectively done in our contemporary context, we must clear up a few more preliminary matters. First of all, we must be clear that such a transition as is envisioned in Christian spiritual formation can actually happen, and can actually happen to us. This, today, is not obvious. What we see around us today of the usual Christian life could easily make us think that spiritual transformation is simply impossible. It is now common for Christian leaders themselves to complain about how little real-life difference there is between professing, or even actual Christians, on the one hand, and non-Christians on the other. Although there is much talk about “changing lives” in Christian circles, the reality is very rare, and certainly much less common than the talk. The “failures” of prominent Christian leaders themselves, already referred to, might cause us to think genuine spiritual formation in Christlikeness to be impossible for “real human beings.” How is it, exactly, that a man or woman can respectably serve Christ for many years and then morally disintegrate? #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

And the failures that become known are few compared to the ones that remain relatively unknown and are even accepted among Christians. The effect of Christians working in the church, politics, business, entertainment, or education depends on the circumstances of how widely the failure becomes known, and on various other factors. There was a case of a pastor who became enraged at something a subordinate did during a Sunday morning service. Immediately after the service he found that subordinate and gave him a merciless tongue-lashing. With his lapel microphone still on! His diatribe was broadcast over the entire church plant and campus—in all the Sunday school rooms and the parking lot. Soon there after he “received the Lord’s call” to another church. However, what about their spiritual formation of this leader? Is that the best we can do? And is one not still really like that in one’s new position? Malfeasance with money is less acceptable than anger, and misconduct dealing with pleasures of the flesh is less tolerated still. However, is the inner condition (the heart) all that different in these cases—before God? The sad thing when a leader (or any individual) “fails” is not just what one said or did, but the heart and life and whole person who is revealed by the act. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

What is sad is who these leaders have been all along, what their inner life has been like, and no doubt also how they have suffered during all the years they “did it” or were found out. What kind of persons have they been, and what, really has been their relation to God? Real spiritual need and change, as we have emphasized, is on the inside, in the hidden area of the life that God sees and that we cannot even see in ourselves without his help. Indeed, in the early stages of spiritual development we could not endure seeing our inner life as it really is. The possibility of denial and self-deception is something God has made accessible to us, in part to protect us until we begin to seek him. Like the face of the mythical Medusa, our true condition away from God would turn us to stone if we were fully confronted it. It would drive us mad. He has to help us come to terms with it in ways that will not destroy us outright. Without the gentle though rigorous process of inner transformation, initiated and sustained by the graceful presence of God in our World and in our soul, the change of personality and life clearly announced and spelled out in the Bible, and explained and illustrated throughout Christian history is impossible. We not only admit it, but also insist upon it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

However, on the other hand, the result of the effort to change our behaviour without inner transformation is precisely what we see in the current shallowness of Western Christianity that is so widely lamented and in the notorious failures of Christian leaders. One that performs first in the case of a contract, is said to merit that which one is to receive by the performance of the other; and one has it due. Also when a prize is propounded to many, which is to be given to one only that wins; or money is thrown amongst many, to be enjoyed by them that catch it; though this be a free gift; yet so to win, or so to catch, is to merit, and to have it as due. For the right is transferred in the propounding of the prize, and in throwing down the money; though it be not determined to whom, but by the event of the contention. However, there is between these two sorts of merit, this difference, that in contract, I merit by virtue of my own power, and the contractors need; but in this case of free gift, I am enabled to merit only by the benignity of the giver; in contract, I merit at the contractors hand that one should depart with one’s right; in this case of gift, I merit not that the giver should part with one’s right; but that when one has parted with it, it should be mine, rather than another’s. And this I think to be the meaning of that distinction of the schools, between Meritum Congrui, and Meritum Condigni. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

For God Almighty, having promised Paradise to those people (hoodwinked with carnal desires,) that can walk through this World according to the precepts, and limits prescribed by one; they say, one that shall so walk, shall merit Paradise Ex Congruo. However, because no person can demand a right to it, by one’s own righteousness, or any other power in oneself, but by the free grace of God only; they say, no person can merit Paradise Ex Congruo. However, because no person can demand a right to it, by one’s own righteousness, or any other power in oneself, but by the free grace of God only; they say, no person can merit Paradise Ex Condigno. This I say, I think is the meaning of that distinction; but because disputers do not agree upon the signification of their own terms of Art, longer than it serves their turn; I will not affirm anything of their meaning: only this I say; when a gift is given indefinitely, as a prize to be contended for, one that wins merit, and may claim the prize as due. It is safe to say that throughout much of church history, Scripture and right reason were considered twin allies to be prized and used by disciples of Jesus. Jesus our Master, do Thou meet us while we walk in the way, and long to reach the Heavenly Country; so that following Thy light, we may keep the way of righteousness, and never wander away into the horrible darkness of this World’s night, while Thou Who art the Way, the Truth, and the Life, art shining within us. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

O LORD, our support and our refuge, deliver us from temptation, give us the defence of Thy salvation, hold us up with Thy right hand, teach us by Thy discipline, and make our way and our life undefiled. “And it came to pass as he (Lehi, Nephi’s father) prayed unto the Lord, there came a pillar of fire and dwelt upon a rock before him; and he saw and heard much; and because of the things which he saw and heard he did quake and tremble exceedingly. And it came to pass that he returned to his own house at Jerusalem; and he cast himself upon his bed, being overcome with the Spirit and the things which he had seen. And being this overcome with the Spirit, he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the Heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of Angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God. And it came to pass that he saw One descending out of the midst of Heaven, and he beheld that his luster was above that of the Sun at noon-day. And he also saw twelve others following him, and their brightness did exceed that of the stars in the firmament. And they came down and went forth upon the face of the Earth; and the first came and stood before my father, and have unto him a book, and bade him that he should read,” reports 1 Nephi 6-11. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

O God of grace, Thou hast imputed my sin to my substitute, and hast imputed his righteousness to my soul, clothing me with a bridegroom’s robe, decking me with jewels of holiness. However, in my Christian walk I am still in rags; my best prayers are stained with sin; my penitential tears are so much impurity; my confessions of wrong are so many aggravations of sin; my receiving the Spirit is tinctured with selfishness. I need to repent of my repentance; I need my tears to be washed; I have no robe to bring to cover my sins, no loom to weave my own righteousness; I am always standing clothed in filthy garments, and by grace am always receiving change of raiment, for Thou dost always justify the ungodly; I am always going into the far country, an always returning homes as a prodigal, always saying, Father, forgive me, and thou art always bringing forth the best robe. Every morning let me wear it, every evening return in it, go out to the day’s work in it, be married in it, be wound in death in it, stand before the great white throne in it, enter Heaven in it shining as the Sun. Grant me never to lose sight of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the exceeding righteousness of salvation, the exceeding glory of Christ, the exceeding beauty of holiness, the exceeding wonder of grace. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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It is Time to Start Considering Your God—He is the All-Powerful Creator of the Universe!

March 1, 2020 1:45 am

Fear of failure brings fear of taking risks and you are never going to get what you want out of life without taking some risks. Diabasis is a center for dealing with acutely schizophrenic young persons that was established by John W. Perry, M.D., a respected Jungian analyst. Diabasis is a Greek word meaning “crossing over.” Dr. Perry had had twenty-five years of experience in dealing with psychotics in various settings. He had become increasingly convinced that most schizophrenic episodes were actually a chaotic but vital attempt at growth and self-healing, and that is such an “Individual” (he dropped the term patient) were treated as a person and provided with a close and trusting relationship, she could, in a relatively short time, live through this crisis and emerge stronger and healthier. Dr. Perry and Dr. Howard Levine, another Jungian analyst, set up Diabasis to implement this view more fully than could be done in a psychiatric hospital. The first step was to select a staff. Paper credentials were disregarded. The criteria for selection consisted of attitudes. They chose people, mostly young, who showed in their training seminars an ability to relate to withdrawn individuals who were preoccupied with events in their inner Worlds. Many of these young volunteers were members of the counter-culture. They knew that it was to be alienated. Often they had been on drug trips—good and bad. They were not frightened by bizarre thoughts or behaviour. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

The home that housed Diabasis had room for only six Individuals, plus volunteers and minimal house staff. It is a non-authoritarian, non-judgmental milieu in which each individual (staff as well as client) is allowed to express oneself in whatever modes one chooses, emotionally, artistically, and physically. Clients at every point of their psychosis are regarded as being in a legitimate state and are not compelled to conform to rational modes of behaviour. Instead the psychotic individual is accepted in two important ways. One is accepted by everyone in the house as going through a stressful period of growth during which one needs understanding and companionship. Of importance is the special relationship with one staff person, who thoroughly invests oneself in building a trusting closeness with the troubled person. Whenever possible the Individual selects this special person with whom to work. Dr. Perry describes well the reason for this special staff member. “The inner journey or renewal process tends to remain scattered, fragmented, and incoherent until the point at which the individual begins to open up to another person enough to entrust to one one’s inner experience as it unfolds. When this happens the content of one’s symbolic experience becomes intensified, and thereupon apparently moves ahead in a more progressive fashion toward its conclusion. It is often surprising how ‘psychotic’ and yet at the same time coherent the patient’s communication can be, providing one feels related to the therapist.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

The same point is made by a young man who worked for two years at Diabasis, first as a volunteer, recently on the paid staff. He says: “We feel that what is called madness can best be understood as a journey of exploration and discover, regulated by the psyche, in which the various elements of the personality can be recognized in a more fruitful and self-fulfilling way. This process can only occur, however, in an environment in which these altered states of consciousness are respected as valid ways of being, rather than being derided as ‘crazy’ and of no value.” The contrast with the medical model of treatment of psychosis could scarcely be greater. Under the medical model, this individual is first of all a patient rather than a person. She is diagnosed, and either explicitly or implicitly is given to know what she has an “illness,” a craziness, which is to be eliminated by heavy medication or shock therapy, or even restraint if necessary, until her “illness” is eradicated. It is clear that there is something “wrong” with her state. “In the traditional settings there is massive use of medication and behavioural restraint in the early phase of the treatment to suppress the psychotic material. There is no attempt to see the material as useful to the individual involved. Thus, after control of the psychosis has been established, no efforts are made to integrate the material into the ongoing life of the individual.” It is a politics of suppression and control by professional power, and it has a very poor record, as indicated by the “revolving door” syndrome of psychiatric hospitals. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

In Diabasis, as in any person-centered therapy, the politics is completely reversed. The philosophy of therapy is, in this case, not one of imposing order from above downwards by a regimen of strict management, but rather it is a more fluid one of sensitively following the Individual’s concerns as they evolve through the process in order to catalyze it. Then a democratic structure of the ward community is the appropriate form, in which ordering and integrating are expected to emerge from the spontaneous concerns and feelings and insights f both resident Individuals and staff together. This means that the Individual provides the leads, points the directions one needs to go. Empathically, the therapist and the other house staff act as companions in following those leads, without sacrificing their own feelings or their own personhood. The non-rational concerns of the client are given a full hearing and, to the best of the staff’s ability (which increases with experience) are empathically understood, as a necessary and deeply meaningful inner journey. The nurses take their cues from the Individual and these closer staff companions. The psychiatrist assists in helping them all understand the directions they are taking, but in no sense directs the process. Essential power and control thus flow upward from the psychotic person and one’s needs, to the dedicated house staff, to the nurses and psychiatrists. It is a complete reversal of traditional hierarchical, psychiatric treatment. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

This focus on the person is evident in the highly equalitarian atmosphere. Staff and Individuals eat together, dress as they desire. The casual visitor would have no way of knowing who was client and who was staff. This whole atmosphere has permeated the organization as well. From the first the administration of Diabasis became the province of the whole staff rather than of a director. The power, responsibility, and decision-making are shared by all. Democracy can be recognized as a state of psychic development in which the ordering and ruling principle is realized as belonging essentially within the psychic life of the individual. The social structure and culture established in the therapeutic milieu should be a reflection of this natural need, a fitting external expression of what is happening in depth. In person-centered therapy, the traditional organization, with power flowing down from the top, becomes totally inappropriate and ridiculous. The immediate result of this whole program on the psychotic individual is dramatic. What has been most remarkable and beyond all of our expectations, is that individuals in acutely psychotic turmoils very rapidly settle down and become clear and coherent, usually within a period of a few days to a week, and without the use of medication. Thus severely disturbed behaviour becomes manageable when staff relate with feeling to the individual’s emotional state. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Although the history of this unique place is brief, the outcome appears to be good. One indication is that four former clients (Individuals) are already on the staff of a conceptually similar small institution. They are now able to use their own past experience to help others. The cost is far less than in the usual facility. And it seems to have left behind the “revolving door” experience of the state hospital. It is reasonable to suppose that this innovative, helpful new mode of dealing with the young person during one’s first psychotic episode would be widely hailed and eagerly supported. Not so. To understand the reasons, we needs to look at the politics of Diabasis, and the threat it constitutes to the traditional politics. It is easy to see why orthodox psychiatrists and even Jungian colleagues look upon Diabasis with uneasiness and criticism. At Diabasis the best therapists often have proven to be relatively untrained paraprofessionals. This is disturbing to the ordinary professional. They are mostly volunteers, thus posing a vague economic threat. There is no strict medical control, in the ordinary sense. This offends physicians. The doctors do not even use their prerogative to prescribe medication. Dr. Perry thinks he has given two tranquilizers in the past ten months! The organization itself is not directed by physicians. They are simply facilitators of a process. This is staggering departure from tradition. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

Consequently there is grumbling and criticism about ow standards. Financial support is very difficult to come by. Like all person-centered therapy, it is revolutionary in its implications, and the professional establishment is fearful of it. To see psychiatrists relinquishing control of “patients” and staff, to see them serving only as successful facilitators of personal growth for deeply troubled “insane” persons rather than being in charge of these people is, I am sad to say, a very frightening scene to psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals. Revolutionaries are seen as dangerous—and there is no doubt that they are dangerous to the established order. A person-centered approach, when utilized to encourage the growth and development of the psychotic, the troubled, or the normal individual, revolutionizes the customary behaviours of members of the helping professions. It illustrates many things: A sensitive person, trying to be of help, becomes more person-centered, no matter what orientation one starts from, because one finds that approach more effective. When you are focused on the person, diagnostic labels become largely irrelevant. The traditional medical model in psychotherapy is discovered to be largely in opposition to person-centeredness. It is found that those who can create an effective professionally trained group. The more this person-centered approach is implemented and put into practice, the more it is found to challenge hierarchical models of treatment and hierarchical methods of organization. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The very effectiveness of this unified person-centered approach constitutes a threat to professionals, administrators, and others, and steps are taken—consciously and unconsciously—to destroy it. It is too revolutionary. This brings us to a core issue in understanding the relationship of the law of God to the grace of God. (Law is used here as a summation of God’s moral commands.) Under the reign of grace, is the moral will of God, considered as a whole, a request or a command? This question is not a theoretical exercise in semantics. The word request connotes desire; whereas the word command connotes authority to require. Response to a desire is optional; response to a command is not. So when Jesus said we love Him by obeying His commands, was He using the word command are we ordinarily understand it, or was He using it as an expression of God’s desire? In the realm of grace, does the moral will of God express the desire of God as to how He would like us to live, or does it express the requirement of God as to how are to live? Some people believe that, under grace, God’s law no longer has the meaning of requirement but is an expression of His desire. They would readily say God desires that we be holy, but God does not require that we be holy. They maintain that we have been freed, not only from the curse and condemnation resulting from breaking the law, but also from the requirements of the law as a rule of life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

They believe that to insist on obedience as a requirement for a Christian is to teach legalism instead of grace. In other words, to assign the concept of requirement to the will of God is legalism, but to assign the concept of desire to it is grace. I believe such a view is a misunderstanding of grace. God’s grace does not change the fundamental character of God’s moral law. Rather, the grace of God provides for the forgiveness and acceptance of those who have broken the law. The good news of the gospel is that God has removed the guilt we incur by breaking His law and has bestowed on us the righteousness of Christ, who perfectly kept His law. Legalism does no consist in yielding obedience to the law. Rather, it is to seek justification and good standing with God through the merit of works done in obedience to the law—instead of by faith in Christ. We need to always keep in mind that God is not only our Saviour and Heavenly Father through Christ, but He is also still God, the supreme Ruler and moral Governor of His creation. The sons and daughters of a kind are still under obligation to bey the laws their father has decreed for his realm, even thought they are his children. They are no more exempt from the laws than any other citizen. Even when the children of the king freely and willingly obey the laws, because they love their father and understand and agree with the laws he has pronounced, they are still subject to the laws of the realm. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

So we as God’s children are subject to the laws of His realm. Out of a response to His grace, we should obey in a loving and grateful way. And, because God has written His law on our hearts, we will, as a rule, be in agreement with His law written in His word. However, we are still to regard God’s law as commands to be obeyed, not merely as expressions of His desires. Along the highways in the United States of America we have white speed limit signs and yellow speed advisory signs. The speed limit signs declare the law of the state. The speed advisory signs caution you to slow down, perhaps because an upcoming curve is too tight to be rounded at the legal speed limit. You can be fined for exceeding the posted speed limit because you have broken the law of the state. You will not be fined for exceeding the advisory speed because you have not broken any law. The law of God is like the white speed limit sign. It is the declared law of the realm. Some have broken that law many times, but Christ has paid our “fine” (which is death) for us. However, His paying our “fine” did not abolish the law. Christ’s death did not, so to speak, change a speed limit sign to a speed advisory sign. God’s law has not become optional because of His grace, merely advisory to keep us from getting hurt as we go through life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

So the fundamental character of God’s law has not changed. What has changed is our reason for obedience, our motive under a sense of legalism, obedience is done with a view to meriting salvation or God’s blessing on our lives. Under grace, obedience is a loving response to salvation already provided in Christ, and the assurance that, having provided salvation, God will also through Christ provide all else that we need. There is no question that obedience to God’s commands prompted by fear or merit-seeking is not true obedience. The only obedience acceptable to God is constrained and impelled by love, because “love is the fulfillment of the law,” reports Romans 13.10. God’s law as revealed in His Word prescribes our duty, but love provides the correct motive for obedience. We obey God’s law, not to be loved, but because we are loved in Christ. I readily acknowledge that it is indeed difficult to keep in our minds and hearts the commandment nature of God’s will without falling into the trap of legalism. It is a hard lesson to live above the law, and yet to walk according to the law. However, this is the lesson a Christian has to learn, to walk in the law in respect of duty, but to live above it in respect of comfort, neither expecting favour from the law in respect of one’s obedience nor fearing harsh treatment from the law in respect of one’s failing. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Ironically, the law of God, viewed as commands to be obeyed, should actually promote living by grace. When we view God’s commands as optional—or think that as God’s children we are no longer under the law as a moral requirement—we subtly slip into a works mentality. If obedience to God’s law is optional, then in our minds we begin to accumulate merit or extra points. After all, we did not have to obey, so we must gain some merit by voluntary obedience. However, the person who knows that one is required to obey God’s commands, even as a child of God, will see more and more how far short one comes in obedience. And if that person understands the biblical concept of grace, one will be driven more and more into the arms of the Saviour and His merit alone. You have got to get people lost before you can get them saved. Only those who recognize they are lost will turn to the Saviour. The Lord Jesus stated the same principle: “For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners,” reports Matthew 9.13. This principle applies to us even as believers living under grace. We do not have to get lost time and again, but we certainly need to be reminded that we are still sinners. The best way to do this is to take seriously the commands of God as a required rule of life. As we do, we will be continually reminded that we really are spiritually bankrupt—even as believers. And as redeemed sinners in a perpetual state of bankruptcy, we will come to appreciate more each say the superabounding grace of God. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

So, then, God’s law, as a rule of life, is not opposed to grace. Rather, used in the right sense, it is the handmaid of grace. Or, to use an analogy, it is like a sheepdog that keeps driving us back into the fold of grace, when we stray out into the wilderness of works. The difference between the impossible and the possible is possessed in a person’s determination. Do those persons who are muted to self, who easily and regularly deny their self, have any mere sensitivity to self left? I think we will never be totally above such sensitivity. There is no reason we should be. Mere sensitivity to self is not itself wrong or sinful, so long as we do not welcome it or allow it to take over our actions and lives. (Recall the distinctions earlier drawn between the “thought of sin,” inclination, or temptation and sin itself.) As I grew older, some of the things I liked as a child, like video games, and climbing trees I grew out of. Yet, I became quite vain and dependent upon what others thought and said about me. A major part of my spiritual struggle in my late teens and early twenties was with vanity. I wanted to praise. In time. By God’s grace I became substantially—not totally—delivered, through prayer on Scripture, general studies, solitude, prayer, service to others, and just experience, along with the movements of grace in my heart and soul. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Perhaps I am rarely governed by vanity now—others, of course, must be the judge of that—but it is still something I frequently feel. And I know that it could be something that controls my feelings and behaviour were I to let it or were God to abandon me to it. Choose evermore rather to have less than more. Seek ever the lower place and to be under all. Desire ever to pray that the will of God be all and wholly done. So, such a one enters the land of peace and quiet. If this plan were followed and were sufficiently accompanied by the movements of God’s spirit within us, we might make substantial progress toward the Character of Christ. One’s desire, is the one design of one’s life, namely not to do our own will, but to do the will of God. One’s only intention at all times and in all things is, not to please oneself, but God whom our souls love. One has a body full of light and is focused on God. Indeed, where the loving eye of the soul is continually fixed upon God, there can be no darkness at all, but the whole is light; as where the bright shining of a candle doth enlighten the house. God then reigns alone. All that is in the soul is holiness to the Lord. There is not a motion in one’s heart, but is according to God’s will. Every thought that arises points to God, and in one’s obedience to the law of God. This may be a bit more than many people could find credible for this life, but it is clearly the direction in which we can and should be moving as apprentices of the Lord. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

What we surely can say is that those who are dead to self are not controlled in thought, feeling, or action by self-exaltation or the will to have their own way, but are easily controlled by the love of God and neighbour. They still have some sensitivity to self-will, no doubt, and are never totally beyond the possibility of falling under subjugation to it. Only a proper discipline and grace will prevent this from actually happening. However, they no longer are locked in a struggle with it. Signs of Contract, are either Expressed, or By Inference. Expressed, are words spoken with understanding of what they signify; and such words are either of the time Present, or Past; as, I Give, I Grant, I Have Given, I Have Granted, I Will That This Be Yours: Or of the future; as, I Will Give, I Will Grant; which words of the future, are called Promise. Signs by Inference, are sometimes the consequences of Words; sometimes the consequences of Silence; sometimes the consequences of Actions; sometimes the consequence of Forbearing an Action: and generally a sign by Inference, of any Contract, is whatsoever sufficiently argues the Will of the Contractor. “And gain, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, though the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without a spot,” reports Moroni 10.33. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

We beseech Thee, O Lord, be gracious to Thy people, that they, abhorring day by day the things which displease Thee, may be more and more filled with the love of Thy commandments, and being supported by Thy comfort in this mortal life may advance to the full enjoyment of life immortal; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, may Thy Spirit speak in me that I may speak to thee. I have no merit, let the merit of Jesus stand for me. I am undeserving, but I look to Thy tender mercy. I am full of infirmities, wants, sin; thou art full of grace. I confess my sin, my frequent sin, my willful sin; all my powers of body and soul are defiled: A fountain of pollution is deep within my nature. There are chambers of foul images within my being; I have gone from one odious room to another, walked in a no-man’s-land of dangerous imaginations, pried into the secrets of my fallen nature. I am utterly ashamed that I am what I am in myself; I have no green shoot in me nor fruit, but thorns and thistles; I am a fading lead that the wind drives away; I live bare and barren as a Winter tree, unprofitable, fit to be hewn down and burnt. Lord, doest Thou have mercy on me? Thou hast struck a heavy blow at my pride, at the false God of self, and I lie in pieces before thee. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

However, Thou hast given me another Master and Lord, Thy Son, Jesus and now my heart is turned towards holiness, my life speeds as an arrow from a bow towards complete obedience to thee. Help me in all my doings to put down sin and to humble pride. Save me from the love of the World and the pride of life, from everything that is natural to fallen human, and let Christ’s nature be seen in me day by day. Grant me grace to bear Thy will without repining, and delight to be not only chiseled, squared, or fashioned, but separated from the old rock where I have been embedded so long; and lifted from the quarry to the upper air, where I may be built in Christ forever. Make us, O Lord, to flourish like pure lilies in the courts of Thine house, and to show forth to the faithful the fragrance of good works and the example of a Godly life, though Thy mercy, O God. God, Whoever lovest what is true, and bringest to light what is hidden, Who wast pleased to come into the Virgin’s womb for the Word’s salvation; sprinkle us with the hyssop of Thy word, and purify us from our iniquities; and mercifully pour into our souls a right spirit to call upon Thee; through Thy mercy, and love we may be saved. You are equipped, empowered, and anointed by the Creator of the Universe for all He has planned for you. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $300’s

Now Selling!

It is time for us all to stand and cheer the doer, the achiever–the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it. Cresleigh Meadows is now selling! Found just north of Feather River Boulevard, Cresleigh Meadows is home of the largest neighborhood in Plumas Ranch as well as the popular Bear River Park. With four floor plans available, ranging from approximately 2,000 – 3,500 square feet offering, three to five bedrooms, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle.

Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Multi-generational living options also available in select homes. Featured above is residence 3 which is 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bedrooms and 2,871 square feet all on one level, which is larger than most two story homes, so it feels expansive! Integrity is honesty carried through the fibers of the being and the whole mind, into thought as well as action so that the person is complete in honesty. That kind of integrity I put above all else as an essential of leadership. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-3/

No Dreams Put in Your Heart by God are too Big to Accomplish!

February 28, 2020 11:58 pm

It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong. Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it is amazing what they can accomplish. If we can no longer live the great symbolisms of the sacred in accordance with the original belief in them, we can, we modern people, aim at a second naivete in and through criticism. I have come a long way and laid a lot of ink on the pulp of dead trees; it is not time to justify this expenditure of nature’s bounty, not to mention the reader’s indulgence. The only way to do this would be to show that what we know about humans tells us about the possibilities for humans, even though we have sketched a rather pathetic portrait of them. If we have really gotten at what makes people act the way they do, at basic human motives, then we have really gotten at what makes people act the way they do, at basic human motives, then we can really talk intelligently to the question that is the most intimate to our heart—what people have always yearned to know, namely, What is possible? As far as the science of humans is concerned, many thinking since the Enlightenment have believed that everything is possible for a science of society. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

Rousseau, Marx, Owens—the whole school of utopian socialists and still today modern revolutionaries in all continents believe that everything is possible for a science of society. All we have to do, they claim, is to change the structure of things and a new society will emerge like a splendid phoenix free of all impurity and evil, because evil lies not in the hearts of humans but in the social arrangements that people take for granted. Humans forget, how things were in the beginning, free and equal under tribalism; they grow up under the news system of kingship and the state and so they imagine that things were always this way and they accept them without complaint. Some even say it is a “sign of the times.” In other words, they are saying dysfunction and deviance is normal and we should get used to it. “And wo unto them who shall do these things away and die, for they die in their sins, and they cannot be saved in the kingdom of God; and I speak in accord to the words of Christ; and I lie not,” reports Moroni 10.26. People live abased under tyranny and self-delusion because they no longer understand the conditions of natural freedom. Revolutionaries still today trumpet this philosophy of history as the fall of pure humans into corrupt social structures. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

The reason the philosophy is so attractive is that people need hopes and ideals to urge them on—they need possibility, belief in themselves in order to even try to make things better. All truths are part-truths as far as creatures are concerned, and so there is noting wrong with an illusion that is creative. Up to a point, of course: the point at which the illusion lies about something very important, such as human nature. If it is false to that, then it becomes oppressive, because if you try falsely to make a new beginning you fail. I know that this bit of wisdom is already stale to our epoch, but even in its staleness we cannot let go of it. We still live in its shadow: the state tyranny is steady, daily, empirical reminder of the costs of ignoring the psychology of humans. Marxism in its traditional form is simply not a correct guide for a new society. However, the irony is that we simply do not know what to do with the stale truth. That is why there is such a crisis in Marxist thought, in leftist-humanist thought. What is a truly mature, sophisticated Marxism? And if we put such a thing together, where does it point on the problems of society? Does the union of Marx and Dr. Freud eclipse the Enlightenment vision for a science of society? If not, what kind of science can we imagine and work toward? These are the vital, aching questions of the contemporary scientific conscience; what kind of answers does our present knowledge suggest? #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

Well, for one thing—one great thing—we now see history as it really has been in terms of overall psychodynamics. Fromm the outside a saga of tyranny, violence, coercion; from the inside, self-delusion and self-enslavement. From earliest times people asked to be mystified, and right away there were those ready to fill the role. People put on the chains imposed by the powers of dead ancestors, then shamans, priests, divine kings, heads of state. Today we understand the inner dynamics of this long history of self-abasement: people need transference in order to be able to stand life. People immunize themselves against terror by controlling their fascination, by localizing it and developing working responses toward the sources of it. The result is that one becomes a reflex of small terrors and small fascinations in place of overwhelming ones. It is a force and necessary barter: the exchange of unfreedom for life. From this point of view history is the career of a frightened animal who has to deaden oneself against life in order to live. And it is this very deadening that takes such a toll of others’ lives. All organisms want to perpetuate themselves, continue to experience and to live. It is a great mystery that we do not understand but observe every day: we are amazed, as we try to club a concerned pest, how frantically he or she wants to live. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

All animals are this frantic, without even knowing what death means; they probably only sense the danger of crushing opposing power; this is as far as the “instinct of self-preservation” takes them, out of the way of what threatens to overwhelm and engulf them. For all organism, then, opposing and obliterating power is evil—it threatens to stop experience. However, people are truly sorry creatures because they have made death conscious. They can see evil in anything that wounds them, causes ill health, or even deprives them of pleasure. Consciousness means too that they have to be preoccupied with evil even in the absence of any immediate danger; their lives comes a meditation on evil and a planned venture for controlling it and forestalling it. The result is one of the great tragedies of human existence, what we might call the need to “fetishize evil,” to locate the threat to life in some special places where it can be placated and controlled. It is tragic precisely because it is sometimes very arbitrary: people make fantasies about evil, see it in the wrong places, and destroy themselves and others by uselessly thrashing about. This is the great moral of Melville’s Moby Dick, the specific tragedy of a man driven to confine all evil to the person of a white whale. The result is that he pulls down around his shoulders the lives of almost all those he comes in contact with. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

However, remember, God revealed Himself through Israel’s pain as the God Who is the first and the last, the beginning and the end, of history. A complete national breakdown alone made the remnants of Israel ready to receive this revelation in its universal significance. However, whenever the Jewish nation used the revelation as an excuse for national pride, and transformed God into a merely national god, another breakdown followed. For God as a national god is always condemned by God the God of history. The mystery of Judaism today lies in that fact. Our prophet describes two very great figures: Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, the World-figure of his time, called by the prophet the shepherd and the anointed, the man of God’s counsel; and the servant of God who represents the saving power of innocent suffering and death. The glorious founder of the Empire had to be the servant of the servant of God. He had to liberate the remnants of Israel, out of which the suffering servant arose. I feel that the only solution of the historical problem today lies in the prophetic concept. For there are two forces in our battered World. One is the force of those who, like the suffering servant of God, exist, unseen, in all countries. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

We do not know where these servants live, or what they will make of the future. However, we know that they exist, and that their suffering is not vain. They are the hidden tools of the God of history. They are the aged and the children, the young men and the young women, the persecuted and the imprisoned, and all those sacrificed for the sake of the future, for one small stone in the building of the Kingdom of God, the cornerstone of which is the perfect Servant of God. And the second force of the World is the force of those who, like Cyrus, rules Empires, and incorporate all the shame and greatness of Empires. They are the people of God’s counsel, because they carry through His purposes in the service of the suffering servants of God. However, they are not aware that they are instruments, as Cyrus was not aware that he was God’s man of counsel. They do not know what shall become of their deeds. And if we look to them in our attempts to grasp the future, we shall now know either; if we look to them, we shall always remain in darkness. However, if we turn to the true servants and to the true God whom they serve, the God of history, we shall know the future. We can find the solution of the riddle of history as a whole, and of our particular history, in the figure of Cyrus in the service of the servant of God. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Whensoever a person Transferreth one’s Right, or Renounceth it; it is either in consideration of some Right reciprocally transferred to oneself; or for some other good one hopeth for thereby. For it is a voluntary act: and of the voluntary acts of every person, the object is some Good To Oneself. And therefore there be some Rights, which no human can be understood by any words, or other signs to have abandoned, or transferred. As first a person cannot lay down the right of resisting them, that assault one by force, to take away one’s life; because one cannot be understood to aim thereby, at any Good to oneself. The same may be said of Wounds, and Chains, and Imprisonment; both because there is no benefit consequent to such patience; as there is to the patience of suffering another be wounded, or imprisoned: as also because a person cannot tell, when one seeth people proceed against one by violence, whether they intend one’s death or not. And lastly the motive, and end for which this renouncing, and transferring or Right is introduced, is nothing else but the security of a human’s person, in one’s life, and in the means of so preserving life, as not to be weary of it. And therefore if a person by words, or other signs, seem to despoil oneself of the End, for which those signs were intended; one is not to be understood as if one meant it, or that it was one’s will; but that one was ignorant of how such words and actions were to be interpreted. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

The mutual transferring of Right, is that which people call CONTRACT. There is difference, between transferring of Right to the Thing; and transferring, or tradition, that is, delivery of the Thing itself. For the Thing may be delivered together with the Translation of the Right; as in buying and selling with ready money; or exchange of goods, or lands: and it may be delivered some time after. Again, on of the Contractors, may deliver the Thing contracted for on one’s part, and leave the other to perform one’s part at some determinate time after, and in the mean time be trusted; and then the Contract on one’s part, is called PACT, or COVENANT: Or both parts may contract now, to perform hereafter: in which cases, one that is to perform in time to come, being trusted, one’s performance is called Keeping Of Promise, or Faith; and the failing of performance (if it be voluntary) Violation Of Faith. When the transferring of Right, is not mutual; but one of the parties transferreth, in hope to gain thereby friendship, or service from another, or from one’s friends; or in hope to gain the reputation of Charity, or Magnanimity; or to deliver one’s mind from the pain of compassion; or in hope of reward in Heaven; this is not a Contract, but GIFT, FREE GIFT, GRACE: which words signify one and the same thing. “This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,” reports 1 John 5.3. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

One issue believers frequently struggle with is the relationship between living by grace and obedience to God’s commands. However, nothing you ever do or do not do will make God love you any more of any less. Rather, God accepts you strictly by His grace through the merit of Jesus Christ alone. Such an unqualified statement about the love of God sounds exceedingly dangerous, leaving me open to the charge of saying in effect that God does not care whether you sin or not. But consider the alternative: “God loves you if you are obedient and does not love you if you are disobedient. Since God’s love is conditioned on obedience and you are never perfectly obedient, God never loves you perfectly of accepts you completely.” Such a bald description of the all-too-common works/merit way of thinking about our relationship with God puts the issue into focus. We are accepted by God, not only in salvation but also in our present relationship with Him, either on the merit of Jesus Christ or on the basis of our own performance. Are we to conclude, then, that since we are saved by grace and accepted by God continuously by grace He does not care whether we sin or not? To use Paul’s strong exclamation in Romans 6.2, “By no means!” Such a conclusions files in the face of all the ethical commands of the New Testament. Such a conclusion also ignores the very clear relationship that Jesus insisted on between love for Him and obedience to His commands. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

Our love for God, expressed through obedience to Him, is to be a response to His love, not a means of trying to earn it. “We love because he first loved us,” reports 1 John 4.19. It is not clear whether John was saying that we love God because He firs loved us, or that we love one another because God first loved us. It really does not make any difference in this discussion because both are true. Jesus said that love for God and for one another essentially sum up all this commands (see Mathew 22.36-40). So one clear evidence that we are living by grace is a loving obedience to the commands of God. Anyone who thinks, Since God’s love is not conditioned on my obedience, I am free to live as I please, is not living by grace, nor does one understand grace. What one perceives as grace is really a caricature of grace. Jesus said that if we love Him, we will obey His commands. Now a command suggests two things. First, it gives clear direction. We are told what to do or not to do. We are not left in doubt as to how we are to live. The commands in the Bible provide a clear set of moral standards. One very popular philosophy today is “situation ethics,” in which actions are morally evaluated in terms of a “loving” response to the situation at hand rather than by application of moral absolutes. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

Situation ethics knows no external, objective standard of behaviour. Rather, it responds to what “seems right at the moment.” The problem with this philosophy is, as Scripture says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure,” reports Jeremiah 17.9. Therefore, anything can be made to “seem right.” And because of the sinful nature still at work in us, this description of the heart is true to varying degrees even among believers. Through “Christianized” situation ethics, all kinds of sinful actions have been committed in the name of “love.” Christians have engaged in adultery—illicit pleasures of the flesh—on the pretense that they were acting in love toward a “lonely” or “hurting” person. Recently I heard of a man who allegedly conspired to have his incurably ill wife put to sleep because “she would be happier with Jesus.” This is the type of trap even Christians fall into when we do not let the commands of God give definition to love. An objective standard of love such as, “love does not commit adultery,” or “love does not murder,” should at least give people pause and certainly leaves them without excuse. God’s commands provide us this objective standard and, when obeyed, keep us from falling into situation ethics. “Do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is,” reports Ephesians 5.17. His will as used here is not His particular will for us in some issues of personal guidance; rather, it is His moral will as used, for example, in 1 Thessalonians 4.3: “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

We should find out what pleases the Lord. To understand what the Lord’s will is and to find out what pleases the Lord are essentially the same; both expressions refer to the specific directions given in the ethical commands of Scripture. However, these verses are themselves commands. That is, we are commanded to know and understand the commands contained in Scripture. And quite obviously, we are to seek to know God’s will to obey it. As my first Bible study leader said many years ago, “The Bible was not given just to increase your knowledge, but to guide your conduct.” A command, however, is more than a set of directions. We have all heard the humorous statement, “When everything else fails, read the directions.” Such a statement suggests that direction are optional, that sometimes we can “muddle through,” sort of figuring out tings on our own without bothering to read the directions. Some Christians seem to think the commands of Christ are nothing more than a set of directions. If we follow them, they will helps us get through life without falling on our face and getting hurt too many times. However, the word command carries the idea of authority. The most basic meaning of the words is “to direct with authority.” A command does not just give guidance that one may accept or reject; a command implies that the one giving it has the authority to require obedience and the intention of doing so. This is true of the commands of God. As the Sovereign God of the Universe, he has the authority to require obedience and He does insist that we obey Him. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

O God, Who didst mitigate the flames of fire for the Three Children; grant, we beseech Thee, that we Thy servants may not be burned by the flame of sins, through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who dwellest in the holy, and forsakes not pious hearts, deliver us from Earthly desires and carnal appetites; that no sin may reign in us, but that we may with free spirits serve Thee, our only Lord; though Jesus Christ. “Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in Him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love of God with all your might, mind and strength, then is His grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God,” reports Moroni 10.33. O Changeless God, under the conviction of thy Spirit I learn that the more I do, the worse I am, the more I know, the less I know, the more holiness I have, the more sinful I am, the more I love, the more there is to love. O wretched human that I am! O Lord, I have a wild heart, and cannot stand before thee; I am like a bird before a man. How little I love thy truth and ways! I neglect prayer, by thinking I have prayed enough and earnestly, by knowing thou hast saved my soul. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

Of all hypocrites, grant that I may not be an evangelical hypocrite, who sins ore safely because grace abounds, who tells his lusts that Christ’s blood cleanseth them, who reasons that God cannot cast him into hell, for he is saved, who loves evangelical preaching, churches, Christians, but lives unholy. My mind if bucket without a bottom, with no spiritual understand, no desire for the Lord’s Day, ever learning but never reaching the truth, always at the gospel-well but never holding water. My conscience is without conviction or contrition, with nothing to repent of. My will is without power of decision or resolution. My heart is without affection, and full of leaks. My memory has no retention, so I forget easily the lessons learned, and thy truths seep away. Give me a broken heart that yet carries home the water of grace. Pour out, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the Spirit of grace upon Thy family, and cast out from them whatever evil they have incurred by the fraud of the devil or by Earthly corruption; that being cleansed within and without, they may never render unto Thee a pure worship, and may the more readily obtain what they fitly and reasonable ask; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Uncommon faith believes above and beyond and gives you a boldness and a confidence to believe for the extraordinary. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15

CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH

Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $300’s

Now Selling!

Mission is an image of a desired state of affairs that inspires action, determines behaviour and fuels motivation. The key to all motivations is desire, and the master key to creating desire is responsiveness to the needs, desires, and interests of the people you would lead. Cresleigh Meadows is now selling! Found just north of Feather River Boulevard, Cresleigh Meadows is home of the largest neighborhood in Plumas Ranch as well as the popular Bear River Park. With four floor plans available, ranging from approximately 2,000 – 3,500 square feet offering, three to five bedrooms, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle.

Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Multi-generational living options also available in select homes. The compassionate leader must take action. Compassion implies that you do not walk by on the road of life. When you see a wrong, you try to right it. When you see an injustice, you try to make it just. When you see a child or teenager struggling just to survive each day, you try to help them. The difference between the impossible and the possible is possessed in a human’s determination. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/residence-4/

Immeasurable, Limitless, Surpassing Favour is Coming that Will Take You Beyond Previous Limitations!

February 27, 2020 2:02 am

We are in a giving society—but we cannot give what we do not have. It is impossible to be an inspirational leader on an empty spirit. We sometimes forget the importance of living balanced lives when the workload seems all-consuming of our time and energies. We seek to make order out of chaos. We need to take the time for infilling and reflection so that we have the inner resources that will enable us to continue to give to others. We know what a person thinks not when one tells us what one thinks, but by one’s actions. There is always war of everyone against every one hereby it is manifest, that during the time people live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called War; and such a war, as is of every person, against every person. For WAR, consisteth not in Battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battel is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of Time, is to be considered in the nature of War; as it is in the nature of Weather. For as the nature of Foul weather, lyeth not in shower or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many days together: So the nature of War, consisteth not in actually fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Whatsoever there is consequent to a time of War, where every being is Enemy to every being; the same is consequent to the time, wherein people live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition, there is no place of Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of humans, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It may seem strange to some people, that has not well weighed these things; that Nature should thus dissociate, and render people apt to invade, and destroy one another: and one may therefore, not trusting to this Inference, made from the Passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by Experience. Let one therefore consider with oneself, when taking a journey, one arms oneself, and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep, one locks one’s doors; when even in one’s house one locks one’s chests. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

And all these precautions are taken when one knows there are Laws, and public officers, armed, to revenge all injuries shall be done one; what opinion one has of one’s fellow subjects, when one rides armed; of one’s fellow Citizens, when one locks one’s doors; and of one’s children, and servants, when one locks one’s chests. Does one not there as much accuse humankind by one’s actions, as I do by my words? However, neither of us accuse human’s nature in it. The Desires, and other Passions of humans, are in themselves no Sin. No more are the Actions, that proceed from those Passions, till they know a Law that forbids them; which till Laws be made they cannot know: nor can any Law be made, till they have agreed upon the Person that shall make it. It may peradventure be thought, there was never such a time, nor condition of war as this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the World: but there are many places, where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small Families, the concord whereof dependeth on natural lust, have no government at all; and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Howsoever, it may be perceived what manner of life there would be, where there were no common Power to fear; by the manner of life, which people that have formerly lived under peaceful government, used to degenerate into, in a civil War. To this war of every person against every person, this also is consequent; that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is no Law: where no Law, no Injustice. Force, and Fraud, are in war the two Cardinal virtues. Justice, and Injustice are none of the Faculties neither of the Body, nor Mind. If they were, they might be in a being that were alone in the World, as well as one’s Senses, and Passions. They are Qualities, that relate to people in Society, not in Solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no Property, no Dominion, no Mine and Thine distinct; but only that to be every humans that can get; and for so long, as one can keep it. And thus much for the ill condition, which humans by mere Nature is actually placed in; through with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the Passions, partly in one’s Reason. The Passions that incline people to Peace, are Fear of Death; Desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a Hope by their Industry to obtain them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

And Reason suggesteth convenient Articles of Peace, upon which humans may be drawn to agreement. These Articles, are they, which otherwise are called Laws of Nature. The RIGHT OF NATURE, which Writers commonly call Just Naturale, is the Liberty each person hath, to use one’s own power, as one will oneself, for the preservation of one’s own Nature; that is to say, of one’s own Life; and consequently, of doing anything, which in one’s own Judgement, and Reason, one shall conceive to be the attest means thereunto. By LIBERTY, is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of external Impediments: which Impediments, ay often take away part of one’s power to do what one would; but cannot hinder one from using the power left one, according as one’s judgment, and reason shall dictate to one. A LAW OF NATURE, (Lex Naturalis,) is a Precept, or generall Rule, found out by Reason, by which a person is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of one’s life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit, that, by which one thinketh it may be best preserved. For though they that speak of this subject, use to confound Just, and Lex, Right and Law; yet they ought to be distinguished; because RIGHT, consisteth in liberty to do, or to forbeare; Whereas LAW, determineth, and bindeth to one of them: so that Law, and Right, differ as much, as Obligation, and Liberty; which in one and the same matter are inconsistent. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

And because the condition of Humans, is a condition of War of every one against every one; in which case everyone is governed by one’s own Reason; and there is nothing one can make use of, that may not be a help unto one, in preserving one’s life against one’s enemies; it followeth, that in such a condition, every human has a Right to everything; even to one anothers body. And therefore, as long as this natural Right of every human to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any person, (how strong or wise soever one be,) of living out the time, which Nature ordinarily alloweth people to live. And consequently, it is a precept, or general rule of Reason, “That every person, ought to endeavour Peace, as far as one has hope of obtaining it; and when one cannot obtain it, that one may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of War.” The first branch, of which Rule, containeth the first, and Fundamental Law of Nature; which is, “To seek Peace, and follow it.” The Second, the sum of the Right of Nature; which is, “By all means we can, to defend ourselves.” In the New Testament no one understood this better than the Apostle Paul. In fact, in his letter to the Philippians, after alluding to guarding the heart Paul prescribed his personal program in one sublime sentence: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things,” reports Philippians 4.8. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

The true, the noble, the right, the pure, the lovely, the admirable all defy negative exposition. Each ingredient was, and is, a matter of personal choice—and our choices make all the difference in the World. We all can choose a thought program which will produce a Christian mind. I have great sympathy for those whose past has been a series of bad choices. I understand that if over the years one has chosen the impure and the illusory and the negative, it is very difficult to change. However, as a Biblical thinker I give no quarter to myself or anyone else who rationalizes one’s present choices by the past. As Christians we are free to have a Christian mind. It is within our reach, and it is our duty. If anything is shoddy or unworthy of praise—do not think about those things. There is a dark side of human experience. So we must law down as fundamental to our Christianity this truth: a Christian mind demands conscious negation; a Christian mind is impossible without the discipline of refusal. As believers in God we must take control of our minds—what comes in and what goes out. “I will walk in my house with a blameless heart. I will set before my eyes no vile thing,” reports Psalm 101.2-3. We must focus our minds on truth, nobility, rightness, purity, loveliness, admirability, excellence, and praiseworthiness with a deliberate and prolonged contemplation as if one is weighing a mathematical problem. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

We are to think about the wonderful elements God wants us to put into our computer. God calls us in His Word to a massive and absolute discipline of the mind. Justification by faith means that every principle that every human-made action, formulation or idea must be protested against inasmuch as it tends to undermine God’s transcendence (and it necessarily does so). This Universal protest entails an affirmation of the Universal power of God. It must protest even against itself, whenever justification by faith is shifted from the status of a principle to that of a doctrinal datum. Justification by faith, not only justifies human’s experience as sinner and just at the same time (simul peccator et Justus); it also justifies one’s experience as right and mistaken at the same time, as having the truth and denying it, as believing and doubting. Justification by faith opens the realm of the intellect to the dominion of Christ alone. When we are farthest from God we are nearest to him. When we process atheism we believe. For our adhesion to intellectual truth is not human-made; it is the outcome of out justification by grace alone. The principle of protest must make us deny human’s self-complacency in respect to beliefs or doctrines that one can grasp, and label one’s own. It must urge us to affirm God’s victory in human’s defeat, God’s truth in human’s untruth. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

No intellectual work justifies; what justifies the intellect is faith alone, grace alone. When one justifies by grace, the Incarnate Word makes humans into a new being, which has substance in one alone and is perceived by faith alone. This New Being is the norm of theology. However, let us be careful lest the Protestant protest indict us even here. The New Being comes from Jesus. Yet it flows from his Universal function as the Christ, as showing forth the divine, as mediating the infinite. It is related to Jesus as the Christ, that is, as interpreted by faith alone. Among medieval theologians the question was often raised: Is theology concerned with Christ? or as we would say, Is it “Christocentic?” It is indeed Christocentric, with the role of Jesus as the Christ, as bearer of the New Being for every human and every creature, beyond what humans have formulated concerning that New Being, beyond even human’s consciousness of it. A picture is emerging from our glance at Holy Scripture, a portrait of the mature Christian life in which the intellectual life, the careful development of our faculty of reason, is an essential, valuable component. The spiritual journey is certainly more than loving God with out minds, but just as surely, that journey is at least a life of such intellectual devotion. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

As we grow in our love for God and seek to be like Him, we make it our intention to become as well-informed and knowledgeable as we can, given that our intellectual development must be balanced with devotion to growth in other aspects of our human selves. Wisdom results when a respectful heart is united with a disciplined mind. Knowledge is the fruit of study, and knowledge is necessary for wisdom. Holy Scripture is the central object of study in loving God with the mind. However, it is not the only object of such study. God has revealed Himself and various other truths on a number of topics outside the Bible. As Christians have known throughout our history, common sense, logic, and mathematics—along with the arts, humanities, sciences, and other areas of study—contain important truths relevant to life in general and to the development of a careful, life-related Christian Worldview. According to the Bible, wisdom comes from studying ant as well as learning Scripture (Proverbs 6)! The true God must be He Who is the Lord of history. God knows the past and the future, the beginning and end, of all things. The gods of the nations cannot answer. For they did not know of the act; they did not predict it; and they did not perform it. These gods are all vain, their words are as nothing, and their images are as mere wind and illusion. Only God, is the God of history. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Seldom in history have people been as disturbed about history as we are today. We desire urgently to catch at least a glimpse of the future, of wisdom and prophecy. Tens of millions from all over the World are trying passionately to penetrate the darkness of their future. And with them, a great many other people long for a strong, inspiring word concerning the future. However, those who have the power to shape the future fundamentally contradict each other. Political leaders declare solemnly that it is almost impossible to carry the burden of their office at this time. Ministers at home and in the army can only describe in negative terms the object of their people’s sacrifice. Those who have to speak to the people of the enemy soon realize that they can say nothing of real promise on the political plane. Only the prophets of disaster-without hope given evidence of complete certainty. However, they are not the prophets of God. We should not expect the darkness of our history to be dispersed soon, either by new conferences or by clever political strategy. Our darkness, uncertainty, and helplessness in regard to the future have depths that are more profound. We do not receive an answer concerning the future, because we ask questions of those who cannot know the future, the gods who are as vanity, the gods of the nations, who are nothing beside the God of history. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Every person tries to wrest an oracle from the god of one’s nation through the mouths of one’s priests, the mighty and wise. And every human succeeds. All people throughout the World are flooded with oracles from the gods of their nations and the gods of other nations. All people compare their oracles with others, and attempt to determine the most credible ones. However, the darkness simply increases. We have seen a number of spiritual teachers either arise in the West or come here from the East and each one seems to find a certain number of adherent. These teachers and their teachings are of varying quality and may be helpful to many of those who join them. However, it is necessary to give a measure of warning against exaggerations made by the teachers about themselves or, if not, made by their followers. It is easy for untrained and inexperienced seekers to be taken in by confident claims to the highest enlightenment. It is better to look for the signs of humility and impersonality. The excessive importance given to the guru, the exaggerated devotion given to one, can only have value in the earlier stages of the quest. The point of view then present has so much ego in it that the aspirant would not be satisfied unless one had a guru. However, it is still an attachment, this relationship, so it has to be let go later on. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

All people speak of the future in terms of their own nations. Yet even the greatest nation is as nothing to the God of history. For no nation or alliance of nations can say that it is the meaning, the purpose of history, that it is the nation or alliance which holds the knowledge of the past and the power to shape the future. The entire assembly of national gods must fall finally under the judgment of God, which condemns it as a thing of naught, as a thing incapable of doing anything at all. We receive so many oracles, but no prophecies, only because we refuse to turn to the source of prophecy, the God of history. Along with a sense of profound gratitude of God for His grace, I also find myself motivated to obedience by a deep sense of reverence for Him. We must be motivated to do good by God’s reverence so we do not forfeit or blessings. It is important to be concerned about disobedience to a sovereign, holy God, even though things may happen to us that cause us to suffer. “Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God,” reports 2 Corinthians 7.1. God will protect us, so we must make a complete break with every form of unhealthy compromise. Promises come before duty and that duty flows out of a heartfelt response to the promises of God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Reverence is a sense of profound awe, respect, and devotion. It is a recognition of God’s intrinsic worthiness, the infinite majesty of His being, and the infinite perfection of His character. Because of who God id and what God is, God is infinitely worthy of our most diligent and loving obedience, even if we have never received a single blessing from His hand. The fact is, of course, we all have received innumerable blessings from God. However, His worthiness is intrinsic withing Himself; it is not conditioned on the number of blessings we receive from Him. “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being,” reports Revelations 4.11. God is worthy of our loving obedience because of who He is, not because of what He does. And parents, remember, make sure your children are comfortable expressing their mistakes to you so they can create a chain of communication and seek guidance. You do not want your children to fear talking to you and make mistakes and try to hide them, instead of finding a reasonable solution. Our motivation to obey and serve God cannot rise to such heights until we learn to live daily by grace and to experience freedom each day from the bondage of the performance treadmill. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

I believe a genuine heart response to the worthiness of God is the highest possible motivation for obedience and service to God. However, we cannot break through to that level of motivation until we are first motivated by His grace, mercy, and love. We cannot be free to think about God’s worthiness and God’s glory as long as we are struggling to earn our own acceptance with Him. The outstanding fact is that different group leaders vary enormously in the way of relating. Some are highly authoritarian and directive. Others make maximum use of their experiences and games to reach the goals they have chosen. Others feel little responsibility toward group members: “I do my thing and you do your thing.” Others, including me, endeavour to be facilitative, but in no way controlling. Each leader should probably be considered as an individual if we are to assess the politics of one’s approach. One new approach appears to be sweeping the country. It is the extreme of the leader-dominated type of group. Members are held to an absolute discipline, subjected to long hours of ridicule and abuse. All their beliefs are “nonsense,” and they themselves are all “nobody.” This leads to such confusion that eventually the unquestioned authority of the leader is established. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

The final damning statement is that “You are nothing but a machine! And you cannot be anything but what you are.” Then comes the optimistic revelation that “if you accept the nature of your mind and take responsibility for having created all the mechanisms it comprises, then in effect you have freely chosen to do everything you have ever done and to be precisely what you are. In that instant you become exactly what you always wanted to be!” A great many of the group experience conversion-type experiences and feel their lives have been greatly changed for the better. From this point of view of interpersonal politics, two things impress me. One is the leader’s assumption of absolute control. Though some resent this, the majority who surrender to the will of the leader indicates what a large proportion of persons desires to be dependent on a guru. The second point is that in the authoritarian approaches, the ends justifies the means. In the person-centered approach, the process is all-important, and the changes are only partially predictable. Knowledge of different exercises can feed into the realness and spontaneity that is the essence of a person-centered group. A leader is a person who you would follow to a place you would not go by yourself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Learning is the essential fuel for the leader, the source of high-octane energy that keeps up the momentum by continually sparking new understanding, new ideas, and new challenges. It is absolutely indispensable under today’s conditions of rapid change and complexity. Very simply, those who do not learn do not survive as leaders. “And wo be unto the children of men if this be the case; for there shall be none that doeth good among you, no not one. For if there be one among you that doeth good, one shall work by the power and gifts of God,” reports Moroni 10.25. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to renew Thy people inwardly and outwardly, that as Thou wouldest not have them to be hindered by bodily pleasures, Thou mayest make them vigorous with spiritual purpose; and refresh them in such sort by things transitory, that Thou mayest grant them rather to cleave to things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Eternal Father, Thou art good beyond all thought, but I am vile, wretched, miserable, blind; my lips are ready to confess, but my heart is slow to feel, and my ways reluctant to amend. I bring my soul to Thee; break it, wound it, bend it, mould it. Unmask to me sin’s deformity, that I may hate it, abhor it, flee from it. My faculties have been a weapon of revolt against Thee; as a reel I have misused my strength, and served the foul adversary of they kingdom. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Give me grace to bewail my insensate folly, grant me to know that they way of transgressors is hard, that evil paths are wretched paths, that to depart from Thee is so lose all good. I have seen the purity and beauty of thy perfect law, the happiness of those in whose heart it reigns, the calm dignity of the walk to which it calls, yet I daily violate and contemn its precepts. Thy loving Spirit strives within me, brings me Scripture warnings, speaks in startling providences, allures by secret whispers, yet I choose devices and desires to my own hearts, impiously resent, grieve, and provoke him to abandon me. All these sins I mourn, lament, and for them cry pardon. Work in me more profound and abiding repentance; give me the fullness of Godly grief that trembles fears, yet ever trusts and loves, which is ever powerful, and ever confident; grant that through the tears of repentance I may see more clearly the brightness and glories of the saving cross. Protect, O Lord, Thy suppliants, support their weakness, and wash away their Earthly stains; and while they walk amid the darkness of this mortal life, do Thou ever quicken them by Thy light; deliver them in Thy mercy from all evils, and grant them to attain the heights of good: through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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It Will Not Take a Lifetime to Accomplish Your Dreams—It Will Happen in a Fraction of the Time!

February 24, 2020 8:41 pm

If you will take the limits off of God, you will see Him do amazing things. Divine connections are coming your way. I believe that the act of leadership is, in part, an effort to impose order on chaos, to provide direction to what otherwise appears to be adrift, and to give meaning and coherence to events that otherwise appear, and may in fact, be random. The complex capacity of the human brain is the subject of ever widening scientific wonder. Its twelve to fourteen billion cells are only a shadow of its complexity, for each cell sends out thousands of connecting tendrils so that a single cell may be connected with 10,000 neighbouring cells, each of which is constantly exchanging data impulses. These twelve to fourteen billion brain cells times 10,000 connectors make the human mind an unparalleled computer. The mind’s activity has been compared to 1,000 switchboards, each big enough to serve New York City, all running at full speed as they receive and send questions and orders. Put another way, there is more electronic equivalent in one human brain than in all the radio and television stations of the entire World put together! Sensory messages combine into concepts. Messages, about variations in light, sound, temperature, or whatever, are sent from the peripheral sensory nerve-cells to other nerve-cells not directly responsive to stimuli from outside the body. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Messages are also sent from various parts of the body when bone and muscles change position, giving information abut posture and movement. Messages are sent from yet other parts of the body about hormonal secretions or other chemicals in the blood and elsewhere, and this has to do with the emotions then being experienced. Messages about all these situations—and others less easily briefly alluded to—can interlink, and thus we get ever more complex organization of messages. Messages can start anywhere, but in their interlinking they can home in on particular cells which thereby gain an organizing or coding or sorting function. These cells are conventionally spoken of as more central, that is nearer the brain which is being thought of as a centre of the body. Most central are the cells in the appropriately named “association areas” of the brain. These can be contrasted with the more peripheral sensory cells, which are only affected by the particular stimuli they are constructed to be affected by, not by other nerve-cells. Some scientist estimate that there are actually around 100,000,000,000 cells in the brain, and many of them can combine with many others, so there is plenty of room for patterns to be able to form. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

We cannot see “blackness,” only a black this or a black that. “Blackness” is a concept which may be excited when a top hat is perceived, or Pat’s kitten, or ink, or whatever. And the appropriate mood and the effect of rain clouds (in minds that speak the English language at least). And certain colours of the Earth, which painters show us are not black at all, etcetera. And for each of these, while the concept “blackness” is evoked, so are a large number of other concepts which share nothing ese in common. “Blackness” just happens to be the common factor among the examples I have chosen. The human brain does not mis a thing. It is capable of giving and receiving the subtlest input—from imagining a Universe in which time bends, to creating the polyphonic texture of a fugue, or transmitting and receiving a message from God Himself—feats no computer will ever accomplish. We can nor form a tentative notion of how perceptions get organized into concepts. Concepts can carrying feeling as well as cognitive components. We now take two more steps in imagination. One is to imagine how movement, and hence action (and hence “drives” and “motivation” and other such) can be built in at this level of the most elementary detail of our cerebral organizations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

The other takes us into a deeper understanding of concept-formation: on the one hand a concept is built up from component perceptions, on the other hand the components get their meaning from the concept to which they contribute—they make a Gestalt (something that is made of many parts and yet is somehow more than or different from the combination of its parts). Muscle-movements and other perceptions (for example the perception of angles) activate one another, round and round, and back and forth, until the concept (triangle) joins the chase. In effect, achieving the concept “triangle”—achieving any concept, making sense of anything—involves sequences of nerve-cells such that sensory input and motor input are mutually stimulating. By the time the simplest concept has been established, movement and behaviour are already built in. Motor behaviour is involved from the state, and so is perceptions. The dizzying potential of the human mind reaches its apex in the possibility of possessing the mind of Christ through the ministry of the Holy Spirit—a possibility affirmed by Paul when he said, “But we have the mind of Christ”—a mind which is constantly renewed reports 1 Corinthians 2.16 and Romans 12.2. No computer will ever be able to think God’s thoughts, not will any device ever be able to know the heart of God or do His works. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

However, they mystery which resides between our ears has this capacity to know the heart of God and do His works. Indeed, it was created for this—to have the mind of Christ. Everything that has to do with inner life: concepts, symbols, internal objects, relationships—when one aspect of something stands for the whole, the whole may be activated although the person registers only the one aspect. A phobia would be an unpleasant example of this. Goodness knows what a spider “stands for” for different people. Even the simplest meanings have to be learned. The recognition of a triangle as a triangle is an achievement. It means that percepts have acquired a new meaning, have contributed to concepts. We tend to take our ability to do this for granted. However, it is important to realize that people are born blind take a long time to learn to recognize even the simple shapes if they have the good fortune to be given their sight in more mature years. Investigators are unanimous in reporting that the perception of a square, circle or triangle, or of sphere or cube, is very poor. To see one of these as a whole object, with distinctive characteristics immediately evident, is not possible for a long period. The most intelligent and best-motivated patient has to seek corners painstakingly even to distinguish a triangle from a circle. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

The newly seeing patient can frequently find a difference between two such figures shown together, but the differences are not remembered. There is for weeks a practically zero capacity to learn names for such figures, even when tactual recognition is prompt and complete. It also takes time to learn to generalize as sighted people do. When the patient first gets to the point of being able to name a simple object promptly, recognition is completely destroyed if the object is slightly changed or put into a new setting. The patient who had learned to name a ring showed no recognition of a slightly different ring; having learned to name a square made of white cardboard, could not name it when its colour was changed to yellow by turning the cardboard over; and so on. These reports consistently indicate that the perceived whole at first vision is simultaneously unified and amorphous. There is not a single instance given in which the congenitally blind after operation had trouble in learning colour names; but a great number in which perception of identity in a simple figure was poor indeed. This may be hard for a sighted person to imagine, but many of us do still have to count the corners to tell an octagon from a hexagon, and many of us remember how hard it was to learn to read music. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

It is curiously difficult to recapture pre-conceptual innocence. Having learned a new language, it is almost impossible to recall the undifferentiated flow of voiced sounds that one heard before one learned to sort the flow into words and phrases. Having mastered the distinction between odd and even numbers, it is a feat to remember what it was like in a mental World where there was no such distinction. It is as if the mastery of a conceptual distinction were able to mask the pre-conceptual memory of the things now distinguished. Moreover, the transition experienced between “not having” the distinction and “having it” seems to be without experiential content. Concept attainment seems almost an intrinsically unanalyzable process from an experiential point of view. Now I understand the distinction; before there was nothing, and in between there was only a moment of illumination. I think this is a point worth making much of, when writing for people whose main interest has been therapeutic psychodynamic theory. It illuminates the danger of assuming, from the therapists’ or from the patients’ memories, that we “always had” some of our subjective experiences—that we “always had,” for instance, envy or a primitive ego, or whatever feels basic. I am presenting an alternative point of view, in which each of these experiences is an achievement. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

When we think about the meticulous learning of the newly sighted, take heed. We are not used to thinking of simple perceptions as slowly and painfully learned. The meticulous learning, and the frequent instances of failure to learn at all in periods as long as a year following the operations, would seem extraordinary and incredible had they not been confirmed by evidence such as that provided by animal psychologists. For instance, chimpanzees, some of which were reared in total darkness, were highly motivated by hunger and by loneliness, poor apes, to cling to their attendant when—still in the dark—they were made to leave their familiar cages. Yet when they were finally brought into the light, there was no sign that either hunger or the desire to cling could teach them, in 40 or 50 hours of visual experience, to recognize their white-clad attendant as more important than any other feature of their environment. Astonishing at it may seem, the chimpanzees appeared not to be able to see, or not to be able to use what they saw. They could not conceptualize. Another experiment (equally unjustifiable in my view) showed that even a dozen bad experiences did not help them avoid a large and easily visible object which gave them electric shocks when they touched it. Yet normally reared animals would go nowhere near it after one shock. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

This shows that meticulousness in learning new things is due to the very complexity of which primate thinking is in fact capable. It is the more primitive animals who catch on fast, if they catch on at all; less primitive animals are far more capable of conceptual learning, but it comes later in development. The cosmic potential of the believer’s mind introduces the great scandal of today’s Church: Christians without Christian minds, Christians who do not think Christianly—a tragic fact which is far more true of professing Christian men than women, as we shall see. Some prophetic voices have been sounding the alarm for some time now, like that of former United Nations Secretary General Charles Malik, who told the distinguished audience at the dedication of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College: “Believe me, my friends, the mind today is in profound trouble, perhaps more than ever before. How to order the mind on sound Christian principles, at the heart of where it is formed and informed, is one of the greatest themes that can be considered.” The Christian mind—while many Christians may worship and pray as Christians, they do not think as Christians. Church is just becoming a fashion show and a car show, for people to show off how well they are doing and gossip about and plot against their neighbours. It has also become a secondary dating application, where people go to look for love. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

The Christian minds has succumbed to the secular drift with a degree of weakness and neverlessness unmatched in Christian history. Elsewhere our generation is suffering from religious anorexia (anorexia religiosa), a loss of appetite for growth in Christ. The bottom line is: this grievous scandal comes from a declining willingness to properly program the amazing instruments God has given us. Christians leave their twelve billion cells unguarded and unthinking—and undisciplined. When we turn to God’s Word, we are aware that the Biblical writers understood the problem in a less technical, though more personally beneficial, way. “Above all else, guard your heart,” reports Proverbs, “for it is the wellspring of life,” Proverbs 4.23. “For as one thinks within oneself, so one is,” reports Proverbs 23.7. The Scriptures tell us rightly that input determines output—that our programming determines production. If, however, a thing is called mutable by a power in itself, thus also in some manner every creature is mutable. For every creature has a twofold power, active and passive; and I call that power passive which enables anything to attain its perfection either in being, or in attaining to its end. Now if the mutability of a thing be considered according to is power for being, in that way all creatures are not mutable, but those only in which what is potential in then is consistent with non-being. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Hence, in the inferior bodies there is mutability both as regards substantial being, inasmuch as their matter can exist with privation of their substantial form, and also as regards their accidental being, suppose the subject to coexist with privation of accident; as, for example, this subject “man” can exist with “not-whiteness” and can therefore be changed from white to not-white. However, supposing the accident to be such as to follow on the essential principles of the subject, then the privation of such an accident cannot coexist with the subject. Hence the subject cannot be changed as regards that kind of accident; as, for example, snow cannot be made black. Now in the celestial bodies matter is not consistent with privation of form, because the form perfects the whole potentiality of the matter; therefore these bodies are not mutable as to substantial being, but only as to locality, because the subject is consistent with privation of this or that place. On the other hand incorporeal substances, being subsistent forms which, although with respect to their own existence are as potentiality to act, are not consistent with the privation of this act; forasmuch as existence is consequent upon form, and nothing corrupts except it lose its form. Hence in the form itself there is no power to non-existence; and so these kinds of substances are immutable and invariable as regards their existence. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Wherefore Dionysius says (Div. Nom. Iv) that “intellectual created substances are pure from generation and from every variation, as also are incorporeal and immaterial substances.” Still, there remains in them a twofold mutability: one as regards their potentiality to their end; and in that way there is in them a mutability according to choice from good to evil, as Damascene says (De Fide ii, 3,4); the other as regards place, inasmuch as by their finite power they attain to certain fresh places—which cannot be said of God, who by His infinity fills all places, as was shown above. Thus in every creature there is a potentiality to change either as regards substantial being as in the case of things corruptible; or as regards locality only, as in the case of the celestial bodies; or as regards the order to their end, and the application of their powers to divers objects, as in the case with the Angels; and universally all creatures generally are mutable by the power of the Creator, in Whose power is their existence and non-existence. Hence since God is none of these ways mutable, it belongs to Hum alone to be altogether immutable. Paul said the love of Christ compels us to make a commitment to be good Christians and to carry it out day by day. Compel is a strong word and often has a negative association with force or coercion. However, here is has a beneficial meaning. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

The love of Christ coerces, or presses, and therefore impels. It is the governing influence which controls the life. It is no a fear of consequences or expectation of reward that motivates Paul. Rather, the love of Christ is manifested in dying for him is the driving force of his life. “For the love of Christ continuously constrains me,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.14. Note the use of the word continuously, indicating that Christ’s love is the constant wellspring of Paul’s motivation every day. Paul never lost sight of, never forgo, never took for granted the death of Christ for him. And as he reflected on this infinite love manifested in Christ’s death, he was motivated, no, he was compelled and impelled to live for the One who died for him and rose again. The good Angles, besides their natural endowment of immutability of being, have also immutability of election by divine power; nevertheless there remains in them mutability as regards to place. Forms are called invariable, forasmuch as they cannot be subjects of variation; but they are subject to variation because by them their subject is variable. Hence it is clear that they vary in so far as they are; for they are not called beings as though they were the subject of being, but because through them something has being. Sometimes when I talk about living by grace instead of by works, I see people begin to get nervous. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Some have warned me against “going too far,” by telling me stories of people who, after hearing a message on God’s grace, have committed some grossly sinful act. I grant the possibility that grace can be misunderstood. However, I believe that, in most instances where people apparently abuse grace, they have not heard a message on grace but on freedom from the law. Freedom from the law is a result of grace and is an important application of truth of grace, but it is not the same as grace. To teach freedom from the law without first teaching grace is like trying to build a house without laying the foundation. That approach can indeed lead to abuse. However, when a person truly understands the grace of God in Christ, he or she will not abuse that grace. Judge did speak of “Godless people, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord” (Jude 4). Obviously, Jude was referring to unbelievers—people who are “Godless” and who “deny Jesus Christ”—so that passage is not applicable to Christians. “And I would exhort you, my beloved brethren, that ye remember that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that all these gifts of which I have spoken, which are spiritual, never will be done away, even as long as the World shall stand, only according to the unbelief of the children of humans,” reports Moroni 10.19. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Each member of the community gives oneself to it, at the moment of its foundation, just as one is, with all the resources at one’s command, including the goods one possesses. This act does not make possession, in changing hands, change in its nature, and become property in the hands of the Sovereign; but, as the forces of the city are incomparably greater than those of the individual, public possession is also, in fact, stronger and more irrevocable, without being any more legitimate, at any rate from the point of view of foreigners. For the State, in relation to its members, is master of all their goods by social contract, which, within the State, is the basis of all rights; but, in relation to other powers, it is so only by the right of the first occupier, which it holds from its members. The right of the first occupier, though more real than the right of the strongest, becomes a real right only when the right of property has already been established. Every human has naturally a right to everything one needs; but the absolute act which makes one proprietor of one thing excludes one from everything else. Having one’s share, one ought to keep to it, and can have no further right against the community. This is why the right of the first occupier, which in the state of nature is so weak, claims the respect of every being in civil society. In this right we are respecting not so much what belongs to another as what does not belong to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

In general, to establish the right of the first occupier over a plot of ground, the following conditions are necessary: first, the land must not yet be inhabited; secondly, a human must occupy only the amount one needs for one’s subsistence; and, in the third place, possession must be taken, not by an empty ceremony, but by labour and cultivation, the only sign of proprietorship that should be respected by others, in default of a legal title. In granting the right of first occupancy to necessity and labour, are we not really stretching it as far as it can go? Is it possible to leave such a right unlimited? It is to be enough to set foot on a plot of common ground, in order to be able to call yourself at once the master of it? Is it to be enough that a human has the strength to expel others for a moment, in order to establish one’s right to prevent them from ever returning? How can a human or a people seize an immense territory and keep it from the rest of the World expect by a punishable usurpation, since all others are being robbed, by such an act, of the place of habitation and the means of subsistence which nature gave them in common? When Nunez Balbao, standing on the sea-shore, took possession of the South Seas and the whole of South America in the name of the crown of Castille, was that enough to dispossess all their actual inhabitants, and to shut out from them all the princes of the World? #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

On such a showing, these ceremonies are idly multiplied, and the Catholic King need only take possession all at once, from his apartment, of the whole Universe, merely making a subsequent reservation about what was already in the possession of other princes. We can imagine how the lands of individuals, where they were contiguous and came to be united, became the public territory, and how the right of Sovereignty, extending from the subjects over the lands they held, became at once real and personal. The possessors were thus made more dependent, and the forces at their command used to guarantee their fidelity. The advantage of this does not seem to have been felt by ancient monarchs, who called themselves King of the Persians, Scythians, or Macedonians, present day more cleverly call themselves King of France, Spain, England, etcetera: thus holding the land, they are quite confident of holding the inhabitants. The peculiar fact about this alienation is that, in taking over the goods of individuals, the community, so far from despoiling them, only assures them legitimate possession, and changes usurpation into a true right and enjoyment into proprietorship. The very essence of leadership is that you have a vision. You cannot blow an uncertain trumpet. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Thus the possessors, being regarded as depositaries of the public good, and having their rights respected by all the members of the State and maintained against foreign aggression by all its forces, have, by a cession which benefits both the public and still more themselves, acquired, so to speak, all that they gave up. This paradox may easily be explained by the distinction between the rights which the Sovereign and the proprietor have over the same estate, as well shall see later on. It may also happen that people begin to unite one with another before they possess anything, and that, subsequently occupying a tract of country which is enough for all, they enjoy it in common, or share it out among themselves, either equally or according to a scale fixed by the Sovereign. However the acquisition be made, the right which each individual has to one’s own estate is always subordinate to the right which the community has over all: without this, there would be neither stability in the social tie, nor real force in the exercise of Sovereignty. The whole social system should rest: for instance that, instead of destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set up between people, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and that people, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by convention and legal right. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Dispose our days in Thy peace, and command us to be rescued from eternal condemnation, and numbered in the flock of Thine elect. “Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must be hope; and if there must be hope there must also be charity,” reports Moroni 10.20. O Christ, the Word of the Most High Father, Who wast made Flesh to dwell among us, enter into our hearts, that all we who have been redeemed by the mystery of Thine Incarnation, may remain united in the fellowship of perpetual peace. Lord God Almighty, I ask not to be enrolled amongst the Earthly great rich, but to be numbered with the spiritually blessed. Make it my present, supreme, persevering concern to obtain those blessings which are spiritual in their nature, eternal in their continuance, satisfying in their possession. Preserve me from a false estimate of the whole or a part of my character; may I pay regard to my principles as well as my conduct, my motives as well as my actions. Help me never to mistake the excitement of my passions for the renewing of the Holy Spirit, never to judge my religion by occasional impressions and impulses, but by my constant and prevailing disposition. May my heart be right with thee, and my life as becometh the gospel. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

May I maintain a supreme regard to another and better World, and feel and confess myself a stranger and a pilgrim here. Afford me all the direction, defense, support, and consolation my journey hence requires, and grant me a mind stayed upon thee. Give me large abundance of the supply of the Spirit of Jesus, that I maybe prepared for every duty, love thee in all my mercies, submit to thee in every trial, trust thee when walking in darkness, have peace in thee amidst life’s changes. Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief and uncertainties. Every minute taken from the time of an illumined worker is selfishly taken from many other persons who may be in much greater need of it. It is a mistake to equate the time-measure of such a being with the average one by requesting “just a few minutes” for that is really equal to an entire day robbed from one’s time work, for which one was born and to which one ought to remain loyal and fully committed. Of course I do not refer here to those illuminati whose work is expressly done through personal contact with individuals or groups face-to-face, but to those who labour in studies, study-rooms, or benevolent prayer. If anyone really and truly admires them, or is grateful to them, and wishes to give from one’s feeling, to the fact known, one will do better by writing a letter needing no physical plane answer and not by obstructing their work. #Randolphharris 20 of 20

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Managers are People Who do things Right and Leaders are People Who do the Right thing!

February 20, 2020 1:49 am

Those who inspire us to better ourselves, certainly deserve our gratitude and even deserve our love. Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility. In the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have it the ability to take on responsibility. The original idea of emotions was probably a reference to the demons that now and then disturb ordinary behaviour. Demons or no, let it be observed that this was an inference from behaviour, demons not being easily seen by most people. Very much later a quite different idea appeared, and is still current. Emotion is now generally thought of as an awareness, a distinctive conscious process that is quite separate from the intellectual process. This notion has led to a good deal of confusion, for it has gradually become clear that no such distinct kind of awareness exists. In the same way, it may have been a hindrance to the development of our understanding, that traditional psychology and traditional neurophysiology discuss perception and emotion in different areas. This is not surprising or wrong, since they originate in such very different systems, but it does impede the imagination. Never mind where sight originates anatomically or physiologically! Never mind what hormones and what patch of brain-tissue is required for aggression! #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

The Central Nervous System is sufficiently complex to have vision and aggression going on at the same time, and room to spare. Just as “black” and “striped,” come from two sets of nerve cells originally yet arriving simultaneously at some central point, give the experience of “black stripes,” just in the same way “nice” and “black” can be experienced simultaneously although the messages come from very different sources. Whatever their origins, messages of feelings can be organized along with other messages. In come corners of the thinking World this is an obvious statement. However, not everywhere. There is, lurking in the thoughts of many, a conviction that feelings are special kind of psychological phenomenon, different from other phenomena in being intangible, coming from nowhere, unpredictable. That may be how we usually experience feelings, but it does not make them inaccessible to systematic study. We do well to heed this warning that although affects, feelings, and emotions are commonly treated as though they were discrete entities, it is quite inappropriate so to treat them. To speak of “an affect,” “a feeling,” or “an emotion,” as though it were an atom or an orange, is as inadmissible as it would be to speak of a “redness” or “a squareness.” Instead, feeling is to be regarded as a property that certain processes connected with behaviour from time to time come to possess. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Feelings is not a thing but a process experienced or studied from a particular point of view. The viewpoint adopted here, with the diffidence necessary in a field so strewn with boulders, is well expressed by stating that some reflections of a neurologist concerned to understand voluntary control of muscle. It will be with feeling that we shall be largely concerned for sensory symptoms so commonly are a complaint of patients with dysfunction of voluntary movement. My hand feels funny when I try to move it. Pondering on this, the natural use of the words feel, seems, numb, clumsy, heavy, helpless, stiff, is to describe what turns out to be motor dysfunction. So, how is it that events neurophysiological can break through to feeling. Feel is a verb. To say that what is felt is a feeling may well be deceptive: the phenomenon usually described as a feeling is really that an organism feels something, for instance, that something is felt. What is felt is a process within the organism. This leads on to “Being self,” which is a phase of the process itself. By phase, what is meant is one of the many modes in which something may appear without anything having meanwhile been added to our subtracted from it. As an illustration, consider the heating and cooling of an iron. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

When iron is heated to a critical degree it becomes red; yet its redness is not a new entity which must have gone somewhere else when it is no longer in the iron. It was a phase of the iron itself, at high temperature. As soon as feeling is regarded as a phase of a physiological process instead of a product of it—namely a new entity metaphysically different from it—the paradox of the physical and the psychical disappears. Thus, the question is no longer one of how a physical process can be transformed into something non-physical in a physical system, but how the phase of being felt is attained, and how the process may pass into unfelt phases again. “Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; be babes in evil, but in thinking be mature,” reports 1 Corinthians 14.20. In thinking be mature! Such an admonition one would hardly expect in the context of apostolic writing. However, here it is, appearing in some letter of Paul in which he contrasts sharply the wisdom of the World with that foolishness of God that is wiser than the wisdom of humans. And he points to the fact that not many wide men belong to the ranks of congregation, but that God has chosen what is foolish in the World. Maturity on the basis of divine foolishness—this is hard to understand—not only for the first readers of the letter to the Corinthians, but for all generations of Christians and non-Christians in the history of Christianity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

In some way, the whole problem of the possibility of Christian existence is implied in this combination of divine foolishness and human maturity. However, perhaps it is not only the problem of the possibility of Christian existence; perhaps it is the problem of the possibility of human existence as such—how to unite divine foolishness with human maturity. Certainly, it is as valid for everyone outside the church as for those inside, when Paul says—“Whoever of you imagines that one is wise with this World’s wisdom must become a fool is one is really to be wise,” reports 1 Corinthians 3.18. It is not this foolishness that conflicts with maturity, but the state of spiritual infancy, the state of being a babe in thinking, unable to receive solid food, milk-fed only. Paul complains that even not the Corinthians are not ready for solid food, that they are still immature, as shown in their theological jealousies and quarrels, that they are still far away from the divine foolishness, which is what makes them immature. What does it mean to be mature in thinking? We speak of maturity in scholarly education, tested by examination and scientific work. In some countries the basic examination for high education is called “examination of maturity.” However, are those who have passed and become students in a professional school really mature in thinking? #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Are their teachers mature in thinking? Is the great scholar mature in thinking? If maturity means having mastered one’s professional field and being able to work creatively in it, the great scholar, the good teacher, and one’s best pupils, are mature. And most of us then who are gathered here today should be able to call ourselves mature. We should not need the admonition—be mature in thinking! However, we do need it, both those who live within the Christian tradition and those who are outside it. We are not mature in thinking, not even those among us who are called outstanding scholars within and beyond the Christian horizon. Our immaturity is our lack of divine foolishness. It might be well first to consider those who feel at home within the churches. It seems that faithful and active members often feel more certain of their own maturity than do those who stand aside in criticism and about. However, their belief witnesses to their immaturity. This sense of certainty is understandable, however, when one realizes that it stems from an institution that has matured through centuries in life and though, and whose foundation is the picture of the most mature personal life, that of Jesus as the Christ, in whom, at the same time, divine foolishness is manifest in every moment. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Belonging to this community gives the members a feeling of being mature themselves. However, they are not, and, as Protestants, we must add that not even their churches are. For who is mature? A mature being is one who has reached one’s natural power in life and thought and is able to use it freely. Maturity in thinking does not mean reaching the end of one’s thinking, but rather the state in which the human power of thought is at one’s disposal. This is the state we are asked to attain, but this is where we always fall short—first, the Christians, and then those who question Christianity. The Christian churches and individuals often bury their power of thinking, because they believe that radical thought conflicts with divine foolishness that underlies all wisdom. However, this is not true, certainly not for Biblical thinking. Radical thought conflicts with human foolishness, with spiritual infancy, with ignorance, superstition and intellectual dishonesty. It is the temptation of the churches in all generations to justify their human foolishness by calling it divine foolishness. This is their defense against becoming mature in thinking. However, although Christianity is based on the message of the divine foolishness, it knows that, out of the acceptance of this message, mature thinking can grow courageously and abundantly. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

What prevents it from growing is that that the guardians of the messages, churches and individual Christians, imprison the divine foolishness in vessels ad forms that are produced by a wisdom that is mixed with foolishness, as is all human wisdom. And if these forms and vessels are declared indestructible and unchangeable, the way to maturity in thinking is barred. For the decisive step to maturity is risking the break away from spiritual infancy with its protective traditions and guiding authorities. Without a “no” to authority, there is no maturity. This “no” need not be rebellious, arrogant, or destructive. As long as it is so, it indicates immaturity by this very attitude. The “no” that leads to maturity can be, and basically always is, experienced in anxiety, in discouragement, in guilt feelings, and despairing inner struggles. For the infant spiritual state with its traditions and authorities is invested with the holiness of human’s ultimate concern and gives spiritual security and primitive strength. It is hard to break away from it. And, certainly, the way to maturity in thinking is a difficult path. Much must be left behind: early dreams, poetic imaginations, cherished legends, favoured doctrines, accustomed laws and ritual traditions. Some of them must be restored on a deeper level some must be given up. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Despite this price, maturity can be gained—a manly, self-critical, convincing faith, not produced by reasoning, but reasonable, and at the same time rooted in the message of the divine foolishness, the ultimate source of wisdom. A church that is able to show this way to its members, and to follow the path itself, has certainly reached maturity. We have loaded down the gospel of the grace of God in Christ with a lot of “ought.” “I ought to do this,” and “I ought to do that.” “I ought to be more committed, more disciplined, more obedient.” When we think or teach this way, we are substituting duty and obligation for a loving response to God’s grace. Let me very clear at this point. I firmly believe in and seek to practice commitment, discipline, and obedience. I am thoroughly committed to submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of my life. And I believe in and seek to practice other commitments that flow out of that basic commitment. I am committed to my wife “until death do us part.” I am committed to integrity and fairness in business relationships. I am committed to seek to act in love toward everyone. However, I am committed in these areas out of a grateful response to God’s grace, not to try to earn God’s blessings. Most of my understandings of scriptural truths has come gradually through my personal study and the teaching of pastors and other capable teachers. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

On a few rare occasions the Lord has been pleased to enlighten my understanding of some aspect of His truth in a rather sudden fashion, like someone turning on a light in a dark room. I did not suddenly learn a new spiritual fact, rather I understood some truth in a new and more scriptural way. This was the case in my understanding of the sovereign grace of God. I had been confirmed legalist, and I dutifully sought to live the Christian life that way. I was sometimes overwhelmed with what I thought were the “oughts” of the Christian life. However, suddenly one day, I understood God’s grace in an entirely new way. I am now convinced, after many years, that it is a more biblical understanding. So what was my reaction to a new and better understanding of the grace of God? Did I abandon my commitment and give up my spiritual disciplines? Not at all. I remember well what I did. I was spending a half day with God, seated in a basement room with a cold, hard, tile floor. As my understanding of God’s grace was enlightened, Romans 12.1 came to mind: Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—it is your spiritual worship. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

I fell on my knees on that cold, hard floor and said something like this to God: “Lord, I have presented my body to You as a living sacrifice before, but I have never understood as I do not Your mercy and Your grace. And in view of my deeper understanding of Your grace, I now present myself to You in a new and deeper way. I give myself wholly to You without any reservation.” I am still building on the commitment I made in the basement room that morning. However more than that, I still seek to grow in my understanding of God’s grace, because I know that only my growing understanding of His grace will make the commitment stick “through thick and thin.” Even if I granted all that I have been refuting, the friends of despotism would be no better off. There will always be a great difference between subduing a multitude and ruling a society. Even if scattered individual were successively enslaved by one person, however numerous they might be, I still see no more than a master and his slaves, and certainly not a people and its ruler; I see what may be termed an aggregation, but not an association; there is as yet neither public good nor body politic. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The man question, even if one has enslaved half the World, is still only an individual; one’s interest, apart from that of others, is still a purely private interest. If this same human comes to die, one’s empire, after one, remains scattered and without unity, as an oak falls and dissolves into a heap of ashes when the fire has consumed it. A people can give itself to a kind. Then, a people is a people before it gives itself. The gift is itself a civil act, and implies public deliberation. It would be better, before examining the act by which a people gives itself to a kind, to examine that by which it has become a people; for this act, being necessarily prior to the others, is the true foundation of society. Indeed, if there were no prior conventions, where, unless the election were unanimous, would be the obligation on the minority to submit to the choice of the majority? How have a hundred people who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The law of majority voting is itself something established by convention, and presupposes unanimity, on one occasion at least. But this understanding of the goodness of giving—and hence of not making oneself the absolute point of reference—must be supported. In laying down my life I must experience much more than “my strength, my wealth, my power.” There must be a realism to it. Otherwise one is in danger of falling into the same kind of cheery falseness that characterizes so much currently talk of self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

The necessary support for giving and forgiving is abundantly supplied by Jesus through the reality of the kingdom of God that he brings into our lives. He makes this available to us in response to our confidence in Him. Only with this in support can we live in Jesus’ teaching, “Give, and it will be given to you; good measures, pressed down, shaken together, running over, they will pour into your lap,” reports Luke 6.38. For there will be periods of time when, from the human point of view, our lap is empty: when we experience cross and tomb, but resurrection is not yet. We must then know with assurance the reality in Paul’s words that “God loves a cheerful giver” and that he “is able to make all grace abound to you, that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed,” reports 2 Corinthians 9.7-8. Jesus’ resurrected presence with us, along with his teachings, assures us of God’s care for all who let him be God and let him care for them. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom,” reports Luke 12.32. It is love of God, admiration and confidence in his greatness and goodness, and the regular experience of his care that free us from the burden of “looking out for ourselves.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

What remarkable changes this introduces into your day-to-day life! Personally, at the beginning of my day—often before arising—I commit my day to the Lord’s care. Usually I do this while meditatively praying through the Lord’s Prayer, and possibly the twenty-third Psalm as well. Then I meet everything that happens as sent or at least permitted by God. I meet it resting in the hand of his care. This helps me to “do all things without grumbling or disputing” reports Philippians 2.14, because I have already “placed God in charge” and am trusting him to manage them for my good. I no longer have to manage the weather, airplanes, and other people. Experience-based confidence in God’s loving care allows all six dimensions of the human self progressively to come into harmony with each other and enables us to be generous in every respect to those around us. Only love of God frames and supports love of neighbour, giving it right direction and the power to carry out its aims of goodness within the kingdom. And love of God and neighbour gradually pulls the entire structure of the person into proper alignment. Without such support in God, talk of “giving being the highest expression of potency,” and so on, will quickly degenerate into empty words, bravado, self-deception, hypocrisy—or even more self-deification, as in much of the human potential and new age movements today. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

It will be totally me-centered and thus will perpetuate the soul’s ruin rather than its renovation. A great deal of attraction of the new age outlook and practice is its insistence that “I am God.” Today friendship has fallen on hard times. Few men have good friends, much less deep friendships. Individualism, autonomy, privatization, and isolation are culturally cachet, but deep, devoted, vulnerable friendship is not. This is a great tragedy for self, family, and the Church, because it is in relationships that we develop into what God wants us to be. However, if we value them as we ought, and if we practice some simple disciplines of friendship–deep friendships and friendships in general (close friendships, good friendships, and casual friendships) are there to be made. We must pray specifically for God’s help in effecting inward changes that will expand our capacities for friendship. And we must pray for the opportunity to develop friendships. Such relational requests may not occur naturally to the minds of most men, but they are prayers which God delights to answer, as my own experience, and that of many other Christian men, amply testifies. Need some good friendships? Spiritual logic demands that prayer is the place to begin. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

A wise old farmer was working beside the road when a family moving to a nearby town stopped and asked him if that town was “friendly.” The farmer said he could not really say. However, the people pressed him for an answer, so e asked them what the town was like that they came from. They answered that it was terrible—the people were rude and small-minded. The old farmer replied, “That is just how you will find this town.” No matter what our disposition, we need to work at friendliness. We need to be consciously cheerful. We need to ask questions. We need to place ourselves in situations where friendships happen. If you are a regular church attender but do no more than attend morning worship, you are depriving yourself and the church of the friendship so desperately needed by all. People, we must place ourselves in the ways of friendship: an adult Sunday school class, a home Bible study, a men’s breakfast group, men’s retreats, and especially, service in ministry of the church. Women are so much better at this than men. We must learn from them to take the initiative. Few of the truly valuable things in life just happen. Usually when they do, it is because we recognize their value and go for it. If you work for it, you can have just about anything you like. If you want to make a million dollars badly enough, you can do it. If you want to earn a Ph.D. and are willing to pay the price, you can do it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

We generally get what we set our sights on. It is the same with friendship. Those who have friends place importance on them. This is why women have more friends than me. If we will work at affirming others, we will have friends. I can live for two months on a compliment. I have a friend who sends me a note every two or three months that is meant to affirm me and encourage my steadfastness. Compliments have huge buoying power. Be liberal with honest affirmation, and you will have friends. Even more, men, if you will work at being a good listener, you will develop friends. Eloquence is with the audience and that is not only true for public speaking but of general conversation. Listen well, and you will be pronounced a brilliant conversationalist! What is more, people will discover they are important to you, which if the key to friendship. Life is filled with small rejections—a sarcastic smile, innuendos, awkard silences, club atmospheres—so that many walk through the day with their guard up. If we discipline ourselves to be accepting, others will see the sparkle in our eyes, the tilt of our head, the ethos of our voice—and will know that acceptance is there. An open, accepting soul is like a well-lit home on a cold dark night. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Almighty and merciful God, unto Whose everlasting blessedness we ascend, not by the frailty of the flesh, but by the activity of the soul; make us ever, by Thine inspiration, to seek after the courts of the Heavenly City, and, by Thy mercy, confidently to enter them; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant us, O Lord, not to mind Earthly things, but to love things Heavenly; and even now, while are we are placed among things that are passing away, to cleave to those that shall abide; though Jesus Christ our Lord. “Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts,” reports Moroni 9.3. O Thou giving God, my heart is drawn out in thankfulness to thee, for thy amazing grace and condescension to me in influences and assistance of thy Spirit, for special help in prayer, for the sweetness of Christian service, for the thoughts of arriving in Heaven, for always sending me needful supplies, for raising me to new life when I am like one dead. I want not the favour of man to lean upon for Thy favour is infinitely better. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Thou art eternal wisdom in dispensations toward me; and it matters not when, nor where, nor how I serve thee, nor what trials I am exercised with, if I might but be prepared for Thy work and will. No poor creature stands in need of divine grace more than I do, and yet none abuses it more than I have done, and still do. How heartless and dull I am! Humble me in the dust for not loving thee more. Every time I exercise any grace renewedly I am renewedly indebted to thee, the God of all grace, for special assistance. I cannot boast when I think how dependent I am upon thee for the being and every act of grace; I never do anything else but depart from thee, and if ever I go to Heaven it will be because Thou willest it, and for no reason beside. I live, as a feeble, afflicted, despised creature, to cast myself on Thy infinite grace and goodness, hoping for no happiness but from thee; give me special grace to fit me for special services, and keep me calm and resigned at all times, humble, solemn, mortified, and conformed to thy will. Incline our heart, O Lord, unto Thy testimonies, and turn it away from beholding vanity: that Thou mayest detach us from the love of Earthly things, and unite our affection to things in Heaven. Bless us with a nature that is sensitive to the serenity, benevolence, and wisdom radiating from divine grace. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Only the Strong Person Can be Ethical, Not the Weak One!

February 19, 2020 1:34 am

Words and plans are not enough. Leaders stand up for their beliefs. They practice what they preach. They show others by their own example that they live by the values that they profess. If there are degrees in the power of being become manifest and how can it be measured? The answer is that the power of being becomes manifest only in the process in which it actualizes its power. In this process its power appears and can be measured. Power is real only in its actualization, in the encounter with other bearers of power and in the ever-changing balance which is the results of these encounters. Life is the dynamic actualization of being. It is not a system of solutions which could be deduced from a basic vision of life. Nothing can be deduced from a basic vision of life. Nothing can be deduced in a life process, nothing is determined a priori, nothing is final except those structures which make the dynamics of life possible. Life includes continuous decisions, not necessarily conscious decisions, but decisions which occur in the encounter between power and power. Every encounter of somebody who represents a power of being leads to a decision about the amount of power embodied in each of them. These decisions cannot be deduced a priori. Life is tentative. Everybody and everything has chances and must take risks, because one’s power and its power of being remains hidden if actual encounters do not reveal it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

The typical forms in which powers of being encounter each other are a fascinating subject of phenomenological descriptions: life, exempli gratis, in a human individual, transcends itself. It pushes forward, it runs ahead, and it encounters life in another human individual which also pushes forward, or which withdraws or which stands and resists. In each case another constellation of power is the result. One draws another power into oneself and is either strengthened or weakened by it. One throws the foreign power of being out or assimilates it completely. One transforms the resisting powers or one adapts oneself to them. One is absorbed by them and loses one’s own power of being, one grows together with them and increases their and one’s own power of being. These processes are going on in every moment of life, in all relations of all beings. They go on between those powers of being which we call nature, between human and nature, between human and human, between individuals and groups, between groups and groups. The power struggle is taking place in the accidental look of a human at another human, as well as in the most complex forms of love relationships. In these examples the continuous struggle of power of being with power of being is described in a way which does not need to take into consideration hostilities, neuroses, or pacifist ideologies. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

The power of being is simply a description of life processes which occur in Heaven as well as in Hell. They belong to the structure of being. This vision of life is confirmed when we consider the phenomenology of power-relations for the interpretation of all important historical movements. Categories such as challenge, reaction, withdrawal, return, belong to a phenomenology of encounters. And it is not only the encounter of groups with groups, it is also the encounter of groups with nature for which one develops one’s phenomenology relations. In the works of the historians and depth-psychologists we find the material for a complete phenomenology of power relations. Everything real is an individual power of being within an embracing whole. Within the whole of power the individual can gain or lose power of being. Whether the one or the other happens is never decided a priori, but is a matter of continuous concrete decisions. A child, in one’s early years, has power of being only within the embracing power of being which is called “family”. However, at a certain moment most children have the tendency to withdraw from the family unity to themselves and their self-realization. They feel that participation in the family life means a loss of their individual power of being. So they withdraw, mostly internally, sometimes also externally. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

The child wants to increase their power of being which, they feel, is being reduced within the group. However, it may happen that after a certain time they return to the family because they feel that without the power of being of the group their own power of being is severely endangered. And again, after a certain tie they may realize that they have surrendered too much to the group and that this self-surrender not only weakens their own being but also that of the group to whose power they have surrendered. Again they withdraw and the conflict continues. The problem implied in this situation is sharpened by the “hierarchical” structure of life. The more centred a being is the more power of being is embodied in it. The completely centred, self-related and self-aware being, human, has the greatest power of being. One has a World, not only an environment, and with it infinite potentialities of self-realization. One centredness makes one the master of one’s World. However, where there is centredness there is a hierarchical structure of power. The nearer to the centre an element is, the more it participated in the power of the whole. The ancient parable of the revolt of the members of the body against the stomach and the answer of the stomach, that without its central position all other members would starve, shows the decisive importance of the centre for the power of being for every part. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Centred structures are present not only in the organic but also in the inorganic realm, notably in the atomic and subatomic elements of matter. And even the most egalitarian societies have centres of power and decisions, in which the large majority of the people participate only indirectly and in degrees. Theses centres are strengthened in the moment in which the fullest development of power by a social group is demanded, in emergency situations. The need for an acting centre makes even an egalitarian group hierarchical. The centre of power is only the centre of the whole as long as it does not degrade its own centrality by using it for particular purposes. In the moment in which the representatives of the centre use the power of the whole for their particular self-realization they cease to be the actual centre, and the whole being, without a centre, disintegrates. Certainly, it is possible for a ruling group to force its will upon the whole, even if its will is not the expression of the whole. However, this is possible only for a limited time. Finally, the loss of the power of the whole, through internal or external causes, is unavoidable. Since no being has a natural authority over one’s fellow, and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions form the basis of all legitimate authority among humans. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

If an individual can alienate one’s liberty and make oneself the slave of a master, why could not a whole people do the same and make itself subject to a king? There are in this passage plenty of ambiguous words which would need explaining; but let us confine ourselves to the word alienate. To alienate is to give or to sell. Now, a being who become the salve of another does not give oneself; one sells oneself, at the least for one’s subsistence: but for what does a people sell itself? A king is so far from furnishing one’s subjects with their subsistence that one gets one’s own only from them; and, kings do not live on nothing. Do subjects then give their persons on condition that the king takes their goods also? I fail to se what they have left to preserve. It will be said that the despot assures one’s subjects civil tranquility. Granted; but what do they gain, if the wars one’s ambition brings down upon them, one’s insatiable avidity, and the vexatious conduct of one’s ministers press harder on them than their own dissension would have done? If the very tranquility they enjoy is one of their miseries, what do they gain? Tranquility is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in? The Greeks imprisoned in the cave of the Cyclops lived there very tranquilly, while they were awaiting to be devoured. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

To say that a human gives oneself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd and inconceivable; such an act is null and illegitimate, from the mere fact that one who does it is out of one’s mind. To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people of madmen; and madness creates no right. Even if each being could alienate oneself, one could not alienate one’s children: they are born human and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but they have the right to dispose of it. Before they come to years of discretion, the father can, in their name, lay down conditions for their preservation and well-being, but one cannot give them irrevocably and without conditions: such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature, and exceeds the rights of paternity. It would therefore be necessary, in order to legitimise an arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a position to accept or reject it; but, were this so, the governed would be no longer arbitrary. To renounce liberty is to renounce being a human, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For one who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with human’s nature; to remove all liberty form one’s will is to remove all morality from one’s acts. Finally, it is an empty and contradictory convention that sets up, on the one side, absolute authority, and, on the other, unlimited obedience. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Is it not clear that we can be under no obligation to a person from whom we have the right to exact everything? Does not this condition alone, in the absence of equivalence or exchange, in itself involve the nullity of the act? For what right can my slave have against me, when all that he has belongs to me, and, his right being mine, this right of mine against myself is a phrase devoid of meaning? War is found in another origin for the so-called right of slavery. The victor having, as they hold, the right of killing the vanquished, the latter can buy back one’s life at the price of one’s liberty; and this convention is the more legitimate because it is to the advantage of both parties. However, what is clear that this supposed right to kill the conquered is by no means deducible from the sate of war. Humans, from the mere fact that, while they are living in their primitive independence, they have no mutual relations stable enough to constitute either the state of peace or the state of war, cannot be naturally enemies. War is constituted by a relation between things, and not between persons; and, as the state of war cannot arise out of simple personal relations, but only out of real relations, private way, or war of human with human, can exist neither in the state of nature, where there is no constant property, nor in the social state, were everything is under the authority of the laws. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Individual combats, duels and encounters, are acts which cannot constitute a state; while the private wars, authorised by the Establishments of Louis IX, King of France, and suspended by the Peace of God, are abuses of feudalism, in itself an absurd system if ever there was one, and contrary to the principles of natural right and to all good polity. War then is a relation, not between human and human, but between State and State, and individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as humans, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders. Finally, each State can have for enemies only other States, and not humans; for between things disparate in nature there can be no real relation. Furthermore, this principle is in conformity with the established rules of all times and the constant practice of all civilised peoples. Declarations of war are intimations less to powers than to their subjects, without declaring way on the prince, is not an enemy, but a brigand. Even in real war, a just prince, while laying hands, in the enemy’s country, on all that belongs to the public, respects the lives and goods of individuals: he respects rights on which his own are founded. The object of the war being the destruction of the hostile State, the other side has a right to kill its defenders, while they are bearing arms. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

However, as soon as its defenders lay down their arms and surrender, the hostile State sees that they cease to be its enemies or instruments enemy, and become once more merely humans, whose lives no one has any right to take. Sometimes it is possible to kill the State without killing a single one of its members; and war gives no right to which is not necessary to the gaining of its object. These principles are not based on the authority of poets, but derived from the nature of reality and based on reason. The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest. If war does not give the conqueror the right t massacre the conquered peoples, the right to enslave them cannot be based upon a right which does not exist. No one has a right to kill an enemy except when one cannot make one a slave, and the right to enslave one cannot therefore be derived from the right to kill one. It is accordingly an unfair exchange to make one buy at the price of one’s liberty one’s life, over which the victor holds no right. It is not clear that there is a vicious circle in founding the right of life and death on the right of slavery, and the right slavery on the right of life and death? Even if we assume this terrible right to kill everybody, I maintain that a slave made in war, or a conquered people, is under no obligation to a master, expect to obey one as far as he is compelled to do so. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

By taking an equivalent for one’s life, the victor has not done one a favour; instead of killing one without profit, one has killed one usefully. So far then is one from acquiring over one any authority in addition to that of force, that the state of war continues to subsist between them: their mutual relation is the effect of it, and the usage of the right ward does not imply a treaty of peace. A convention has indeed been made; but this convention, so far from destroying the state of war, presupposes its continuance. So, from whatever aspect we regard the question, the right of slavery is null and void, not only as being illegitimate, but also because it is absurd and meaningless. The words slave and right contradict each other, and are mutually exclusive. It will always be equally foolish for a being to say to a being or to people: “I make with you a convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I shall keep it as long as I like, and you will keep it as long as I like.” The question of the origins of inequality is only half of the problem of a sophisticated Marxist philosophy of history. The other half is that Rousseau’s argument with Hobbes has never been satisfactorily settled. The Marxists have said, with Rousseau, that because human nature is a blank slate, neutral, even good; evil exists because of social institutions that encourage it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Evil also exists because of social classes and the hate, envy, competition, degradation, and scapegoating that stem from them; change society and human’s natural goodness will flower. Not so, say the conservatives, and they point for proof at those revolutionary societies which have abolished social class but which continue to express personal and social evil; evil, then must be in the heart of the creature; the best that social institutions can do is keep it blunted; and social institutions that already effectively do this without excessive repression and within legal safeguards for individual rights—why, such social institutions should not be changed. So argue the conservatives. This question has been the central one of science of human, and as such the knottiest in its whole career; thus it is logical that it is the last problem to be solved. I myself have been coming back to it again and again for a dozen years now, and each time I thought there was a clear solution I later discovered that vital things had been left unsaid. At first it seemed to me that Rousseau had already won the argument with Hobbes: had he said that evil is a robust child? Then, as Rousseau argued, children are clumsy, blustering organisms who must take some toll of their environment, who see activity and self-expansion in an innocent way, but who cannot yet control themselves. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Their intentions are not evil, even if their acts cause damage. In this view, humans are an energy-converting organism who must exert one’s manipulative powers, who must damage one’s World in some ways, who must make it uncomfortable for others, excreta, by one’s own nature an active being. One seeks self-expansion from a very uncertain power base. Even if humans hurt others, it is because one is weak and afraid, not because one is confident and cruel. Only the strong person can be ethical, not the weak one. Hate and violent aggression could be developed in humans as a special kind of cultural orientation, something people learned to do in order to be big and important—as some primitive tribes learned warfare and won social esteem because of their cruelty to enemies, excreta. It was not that humans had instincts of hate and aggression, but rather that one could easily be molded in that way by the society which rewarded them. The thing that characterized humans is one’s need for self-esteem, and one would do anything one’s society wanted in order to earn it. From this point of view, even scapegoating and the terrible toll it has taken historically seemed to be explainable in terms of the thing that humans wanted most was to be part of a close and loving ingroup, to feel at peace and harmony with others of one’s kind. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

And to achieve this intimate identification it was necessary to strike at strangers, pull the group together by focusing it on an outside target. The sacrificial ravages of the Nazis could be approached in terms of neutral motives or even altruistic ones: love, harmony, unity. Eichmann was a simple bureaucrat who wanted only to be admired and rewarded for a job efficiently done and wielded his rubber stamp on the death of millions with the nonchalance of a postal clerk. We could even, as we have seen, subsume this under the Agape motive: humans want to merge with a larger whole, have something to dedicate one’s existence to in trustfulness and in humility; one wants to serve the cosmic powers. The most noble human motive, then, would cause the greatest damage because it would lead people to find their highest use as part of an obedient mass, to give their complete devotion and their lobes to their leaders. It is not aggressive drives that have taken the greatest toll in history, but rather unselfish devotion, hyper-dependence combined with suggestibility. Humans are less driven by adrenalin than one is drugged by symbols, by cultural belief systems, by abstractions like flags and anthems: Wars are fought for words. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Much of aggression is due to the way children are brought up and the kind of life experiences people have. On this view, the most twisted and vicious people are those who have been most deprived, most cheated of love, warmth, self-realization. Dr. Strangelove would be the paradigm of the kind of mechanical coldness and life frustration which leads to World destruction. Again, this is a pure Marxist view: changing the life-denying institutions of modern society would enable a new type of human being to take shape. The hope of the Enlightenment in its full development is to show clinically what prevents self-reliant humans. This has been the burden—to argue for the ideal of autonomy while showing precisely what hinders it in the interplay of the individual psychology and society. In this way the whole historical problem of slavishness is attacked. People were always ready to yield their wills, to worship the hero, because they were not given a chance for developing initiative, stability, and independence. Humans are still a tool of others because one has not developed self-reliance, full and independent insides. In this way can human get some kind of even keel, some sort of inner gyroscope that will keep one from alternating eternally between the poles of sadism and masochism. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Still, holiness and edification in all lands would not be perfect joy. Nor would a great ministry of healing and raising the dead. Nor would possession of all languages and all science, nor all understanding of prophecy and Scripture, and insight into the secrets of every soul. Nor would even the conversion of all unbelievers to faith in Christ! Perfect joy is wherein when they come to their quarters—dirty, wet, and exhausted from hunger—they are rejected, repeatedly, rebuffed, and finally driven away by force, then if we accept such injustice, such cruelty, and such contempt with patience, without being ruffled and without murmuring, and if we bear all these injuries with patience and joy, thinking of all the sufferings of our Blessed Lord, which we would share out of love for God, here, finally, is perfect joy. Giving and forgiving are of course central to the divinely restricted life, as we take on the character truly suited to the human soul. Even from one’s strictly humanistic perspective, the most widespread misunderstanding is that which assumes that giving is giving up something, being deprived of, sacrificing. People whose main orientation is a non-productive one feel giving as an impoverishment; the virtue of giving, to them, is possessed in the very act of acceptance of sacrifice. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

This certainly fits in with the purely negative understanding of self-denial discussed above. In fact, it has become a part of our ethical culture. For the productive character giving has an entirely different meaning. Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. The experience of heightened vitality fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving is possessed the expression of my aliveness. The apostle Paul wrote the entire sixth chapter of Romans to answer the question, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?’ Why did he have to deal with such a question? What had he said to even raise the issue? His whole teaching to that point in Romans was that justification is by faith in Jesus Christ alone, culminating in his sweeping statement in Romans 5.20: “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” Paul realized his unqualified presentation of the grace of God left him open to being misunderstood. Paul himself knew that his insistence on the pure grace of God without any admixture of commitment or discipline or obedience on our part could cause us to misunderstand him. He knew his readers could respond with this attitude: “Well, if that is true, let us go out and sin all we want. The more we sin, the more we cause God’s grace to abound.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

This type of response is always a possibility. In fact, if our concept of grace does not expose us to that possibility. In fact, if our concept of grace does not expose us to that possible misunderstanding, then we do not thoroughly understand grace. I believe it is because we are afraid of this attitude that we often change the doctrine of grace into a doctrine of works. “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a person is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation that this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will be redound all the more to the glory of grace. Obviously this does not mean that we should try to confuse people with our presentation of the gospel. However, the presentation of salvation by grace alone, apart from any preconditions on the part of our hearers, leaves us open to the possibility that people may charge us with saying, “It does not matter what you do; sin as much as you like.” But you know doing evil does not result in good, and that one’s condemnation is deserved. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

The grace of salvation is the same grace by which we live the Christian life. We have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. We are not only justified by grace through faith, we stand every day in this same grace. And just as the preaching of jusitification by grace is open to misunderstanding, so is the teaching of living by grace. The solution to this problem is not to add legalism to grace. Rather, the solution is to be so gripped by the magnificence and bondless generosity of God’s grace that we respond out of gratitude rather than out of a sense of duty. “And if they perish it will be like unto the Jaredites, because of the willfulness of their hearts, seeking for blood and revenge. My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may his suffering and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever. And may the grace of God the Father, whose throne is high in the Heavens, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who sitteth on the right hand of his power, until all thing shall become subject unto him, be, and abide with your forever. Amen,” reports Moroni 9.23 and 25-26. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Show the light of Thy countenance upon us, O Lord, that the going-forth of Thy word may give light and understanding, to nourish the hearts of the simple; and that while our desire is set on Thy commandments, we may receive with open heart the Spirit of wisdom and understanding. O God, with Whom if the well of life, and in Whose light we see light; increase in us, we beseech Thee, the brightness of Divine knowledge, whereby we may be able to reach Thy plenteous fountain; impart to our thirsting souls the draught of life, we restore to our darkened minds the light from Heaven. Bless God, ten thousand snares are mine without and within, defend thou me; when sloth and indolence seize me, give me views of Heaven; when sinners entice me, give me disrelish of their ways; when sensual pleasures tempt me, purify and refine me; when I desire Worldly possessions, help me to be rich toward thee; when the vanities of the World ensnare me, let me not plunge into new guilt and ruin. May I remember the dignity of my spiritual release, never be too busy to attend to my soul, never be so engrossed with time that I neglect the things of eternity; thus may I not only live, but grow towards thee. For my mind to right notions of religion, that I may not judge of grace by wrong conceptions, not measure my spiritual advances by the efforts of my natural being. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

May I seek after an increase of divine love to thee, after unreserved resignation to they will, after extensive benevolence to my fellow creatures, after patience and fortitude of soul, after a Heavenly disposition after a concern that I may please thee in public and private. Draw on my soul the lineaments of Christ, in every trace and feature of which thou wilt take delight, for I am thy workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, thy letter written with the Holy Spirit’s pen, thy tilled soil ready for the sowing, then harvest. We have paid, and are still paying, a heavy price for our comfortable conviction that the philosophic illuminate is a fool, to whom it is unnecessary to pay serious attention. It is such people who ought to be made, not the leaders of humankind, but the counsellors to the leaders. A single meeting with the self-actualized brings forth our involuntary respect. A long association with one brings forth our loving devotion also. If anyone brings one homage or reverence one takes it, not to oneself but to the Unseen Higher Power of God, before whom one lays it. Most people make their appeal t authority and are constantly at pains to quote letter and script for their words; others will gaze into their own glasses of vision and report upon the reflections of Truth that they descry within: but the illuminated one live the life and so declare only that which they have experience themselves; indeed what they say comes as form on high for us. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Upon Some Mountain-Top Until I Feel a Glowing Splendour Round About Me Hung!

February 18, 2020 12:54 am

What you do speaks so loudly, they cannot hear what you say. Example is a powerful teacher! If as inspirational leaders we are dedicated to helping others grow through their works, then we must strive to model the values, attitudes and actions that we wish to see in those we lead. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belabouring those problems which divide us. Dr. Freud postulates two basic feelings, Lust and Unlust—pleasure and distress—mirror images of each other. This seems to reflect something in our common thinking. Neurophysioogically, however, they belong to very different bodily systems. Although in our culture we think of them as opposites, both systems can contribute simultaneously to our experience, and indeed, often do. Both systems are very complex and wide-branching, so there need be no difficulty in imagining that these experiences, of pleasure and of pain, can also be connected with other experiences, and organized together, just as “black” and “stripes” are organized in purely visual material. Some messages register as “pain”. There is general agreement that there are nerve endings which generate the messages which are ultimately interpreted as pain. These sensory nerve endings are found in the skin, in the sheath surrounding muscles, in the internal organs, and in the membrane surrounding bones. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Just about any kind of manipulation that causes tissue damage will cause pain, and thus most investigator believe that pain receptors are chemically stimulated by substances liberated by damages tissues. The experience of pain is like our experience of “orange” or “bitter” or other information brought in by the senses, in that there are various specialized sensory nerve-endings which can be activated and which in due course produce the experience of “pain”. There are different kinds of pain, with different kinds of nerve-endings concerned with each. There are chemical substances, drugs, which can alter the way messages register because a cell’s receptivity can be affected by chemical substances in the bloodstream—in effect such drugs relieve the perception of pain or change our perception of how unbearable it is. There is also evidence now that the body can itself produce morphine-like substances (a narcotic, psychoactive compound with sleep-inducing properties, which will relieve pain) to regulate the registration of pain—endorphins. Some messages register as “pleasure”. The experience of pleasure seems much more diffuse than the experience of pain, and does not depend on sensory nerve-endings as pain does. On the other hand, distinct areas of the brain are again concerned. Experiments with animals have made it clear that there is an area in the medial forebrain, which can be called a “pleasure-centre”. If stimulated electrically, it produces an effect which the animal seeks to repeat. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Birds were trained to press two levers—one delivered rewarding electrical brain stimulation (ESB), the other one produced food pellets. The animals were allowed to press the levers for only one hour each day, and some of them spent so much time at the bar that delivered ESB that they starved to death. When food and ESB are continuously available, however, birds will alternately eat, press the lever for ESB, and sleep; they will not remain at the lever for ESB to the exclusion of other activities. What excites a pleasure-centre in normal circumstances (that is not because of an electrode implanted in the brain by an experimenter) is not yet clear. However, neural messages must be involved, and that must mean that the experience of pleasure is available to be organized with other experiences, just as a sound is, or a touch or a smell or a pain. There is evidence suggesting that when the pleasure-centre is stimulated, this tends to arouse the biological drives, so that animals who have access to increased pleasure-stimulation also explore more, eat more, drink more, copulate more. Pleasure is thus a general arouser of activity—an anti-depressant! After suffering a tragedy, people who have watched comedy shows like 2 Broke Girls, reported laughing so much that it helped hasten their recovery from the event. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Aggression and fear can also be produced in the laboratory. In one study cats could be induced to attack a target or flee from a cage in response to electrical stimulation of the brain. Various hormone-like chemicals, some linked to pleasures of the flesh, increase or decrease the amount of aggression or fear which might otherwise be produced or experiences by a person. For our purpose we do not need to understand the details. We need only to notice that just as information is available to the nervous systems about where our limbs are or our head, so there is information available about the amount o pain or pain-inhibition, or aggression, or fear, or pleasure, or pleasures of the flesh stimulus, floating in our bloodstream, contracting a muscle, or distending a vessel. In the manifest picture of neuroses guilt feelings seem to play a paramount role. In some neuroses these feelings are expressed openly and abundantly; in others they are more disguised but their presence is suggested by behaviour, attitudes and ways of thinking and reacting. A neurotic person is often inclined to account for one’s sufferings by feeling that one does not deserve any better. This feeling may be quite vague and indefinite, or it may be attached to thoughts or activities which are socially tabooed, such as masturbation, incest wishes, death wishes towards relatives. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Such a person who has manifested deviant thoughts usually tends to feel guilty at the slightest occasion. If someone asks to see one one’s first reaction is to expect recrimination for something one has done. If friends do not come or write for some time one asks oneself whether one has offended them. If anything goes wrong one assumes that it is was one’s fault. Even if others are blatantly in the wrong, have definitely mistreated one, one still manages to blame oneself for it. If there is any collision of interests or any argument one is inclined to assume blindly that the others are right. There is but a fluctuating distinction between these latent guilt feelings, waiting to creep up on any occasion, and what has been interpreted as unconscious guilt feelings, evident in depressive conditions. The latter take the form of self-accusations that are often fantastic or at least grossly exaggerated. Also the neurotic’s everlasting efforts to appear justified in one’s own and in others’ eyes, particularly when the enormous strategical value of such efforts is not clearly recognized, suggest the existence of free-floating guilt feelings which have to be kept in abeyance. The existence of diffuse guilt feelings is suggested further by the neurotic’s haunting fear of being found out or of being disapproved of. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

In one’s discussion with the analyst one may act as if the relationship were that between a criminal and judge, thus making it very difficult for one to be co-operative in the analysis. Every interpretation that is given to the individual one will take as a reproach. If the analyst has shown one, for example, that there is a lurking anxiety behind a certain defensive attitude, one will answer, “I knew that I was a coward.” If the analyst explains that one has not dared to approach people for fear of being rejected, one will take blame on one’s shoulders for having thus, as one interprets it, tried to make life easy for oneself. The compulsive striving for perfection develops to a large extent out of this need to avoid any disapproval. Finally, a neurotic person may feel definitely more at ease, even lost certain of one’s neurotic symptoms, if an adverse event occurs, such as losing a fortune or incurring an accident. Observation of this reaction, and also the fact that sometimes one seems to arrange or provoke adverse happenings, if only inadvertently, may lead to an assumption that the neurotic person has guilt feelings so strong that one develops a need for punishment in order to get rid of them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Thus there seems to be a great deal of evidence not only for the existence of particularly keen guilt feelings in a neurotic person but also for the power they exert on one’s personality. However, in spite of this apparent evidence it must be questioned whether the conscious guilt feelings of the neurotic person are really genuine and whether symptomatic attitudes suggestive of unconscious guilt feelings do not allow another interpretation. There are several factors which give rise to such doubts. Guilt feelings, like inferiority feelings, are not at all unwelcome; the neurotic person is far from eager to get rid of them. In fact one insists on one’s guilt and vigourously resists every attempted to exonerate one. This attitude alone would suffice to indicate that behind one’s insistences on feeling guilty there must, as in inferiority feelings, be a tendency which has an important function. And another factor should be kept in mind. It is painful to feel honestly regretful or ashamed of something, and more painful still to express the feeling to someone else; in fact a neurotic person, even more than others, will refrain from doing so, because of one’s fear of disapproval. What we have called guilt feelings, however, one expresses very readily. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Furthermore, the self-recriminations which are so frequently interpreted as indicating underlying guilt feelings in the neurotic are characterized by distinctly irrational elements. Not only in one’s specific self-accusations, but also in one’s diffuse feelings of not deserving any kindliness, praise, success, one is likely to go to any extreme or irrationality, from gross exaggerations to sheer phantasy. Another factor suggesting that self-recriminations are not necessarily the expression of genuine guilt feelings is the fact that unconsciously the neurotic oneself is not at all convinced of one’s unworthiness. Even when one seems to be submerged in guilt feelings, one may become very resentful if others show a tendency to takes one’s recriminations seriously. A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, it has no critical faculty, and the improbable does not exist for it. Inclined as it itself is to all extremes, a group can only be excited by an excessive stimulus. Anyone who wishes to produce an effect upon it needs no logical adjustment in one’s arguments; one must paint in the most forcible colours, one must exaggerate, and one must repeat the same thing again and again. It respects force and can only be slightly influenced by kindness, which it regards merely as a form of weakness. It wants to be ruled and oppressed, and to fear its masters. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

And, finally, groups have never thirsted after truth. They demand illusions, and cannot do without them. They constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is untrue as by what is true. They have an evident tendency not to distinguish between the two. A group is an obedient herd, which could never live without a master. It has such a thirst for obedience that it submits instinctively to anyone who appoints oneself as its masters. However, for some, these views seems not only heretical but highly dangerous: that the human organism is, at its deepest level, trustworthy; that human’s basic nature is not something to be feared, but to be released in responsible self-expression; that small groups (in therapy or in classrooms) can responsibly and sensitively build constructive interpersonal relationships and choose wise individual and group goals; that all of the foregoing will be achieved if a facilitative person assists by creating a climate of realness, understanding an caring. Yet, if there is no one told control an individual’s innately destructive core, a dangerous psychopath may be produced. “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.14-15. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Living by grace instead of by works means you are free from the performance treadmill. It means God has already given you an “A” when you deserve an “F,” He has already given you a full day’s pay even though you may have worked only one hour. It means you do not have to perform certain spiritual disciplines to earn God’s approval. Jesus Christ has already done that for you. You are loved and accepted by God through the merit of Jesus, and you are blessed by God through the merit of Jesus. Nothing you ever do will cause Him to love you any more or any less. He loves your strictly by His grace given to you through Jesus. How does this emphasis on God’s free and sovereign grace make you feel? Does it make you a little nervous? Does it seem a bit scary to hear that nothing you do will ever make God love you any more or bless you any more? Do you think, Well, if you take the pressure off like that and tell me all of my effort will never earn me one blessing, then I am afraid that I will slack off and stop doing the things I need to do to live a disciplined Christian life? The Bible recognizes the possibility that the grace of God can be misunderstood and even abused. It speaks of “Godless people, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality,” reports Jude 4. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Anticipating the question, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” (Romans 6.1), it warns us not to use our freedom to indulge the sinful nature (Galatians 6.13). All of these passages recognize the possibility that the Bible’s teaching that grace alone is the basis for God’s blessing can be misconstrued as an excuse for indulgent, slothful living. When a giver and a receiver share an expectation about how much sincerity is owed, gestures can be judged as paying less or more than what is owed. Thus, when the receiver of a favour responds less generously than expected, the giver might openly say, “So that is all the thanks I get?” Or one might respond to the thanks in a cold and resentful manner, which indicated that one is rejecting the thanks and considers the other party still in one’s debt. Alternatively, the giver may offer more, as when ne discounts the very need for a thanks by redefining the gift as a voluntary act of pleasure: “Oh on, there is nothing to thank me for. It was a pleasure to read your manuscript.” The sincerity of such a statement, and perhaps the effort needed to sustain it, is a gift in addition to the gift. It is the gift of not seeing the first gift as something to feel grateful for at all because that is just the kind of nice person the giver is. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

How much in the way of displaying sincerity or of working to feel truly sincere (and working, too, at hiding the effort) seems right to us depends on the depth of the bond in question. In trivial exchanges, when no deep bond exists, less debt is passed back and forth, and the range of qualities, actions, and things that are given and received is reduced. In the case of deeper bonds—as between wife and husband, or between lovers, or between best friends—there are many more ways available to repay a debt; emotion work is only one of them. Most of the time, gratitude comes naturally, thoughtlessly, and without effort. Only when it comes hard do we recognize what has been true all along: that we keep a mental ledger with “owed” and “received” columns for gratitude, love, anger, guilt, and other feelings. Normally, we are unaware of this; indeed, the very idea of consciously keeping such a ledger is repellent. Yet moments of “inappropriate feeling” may often be traced to a latent prior notion of what had been felt all along to be owed or owing. Often, feeling rules are unshared. “Poor communication” and misunderstanding sometimes boils down to conflicting notions about what feelings are owed to another. It is psychologically analogous to disagreeing on the exchange rate of dollars to euros. A husband, for example, may latently feel that he is owed more gratitude for sharing housework then his wife gives him and more gratitude than he gives her for doing the same thing. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

In straight exchange, the focus is on making a gesture toward observing a rule, not on the rule itself. In improvisational exchange, the rule itself is called into question or played with. Consider the following exchange, observed at the San Francisco International Airport. Two airline ticket agents are working behind the counter; one is experiences, the other is new on the job. The new agent is faced with a difficult ticket: it needs to be reissued for a different date and at a lower fare, with the extra money already paid to be credited to an air travel card. His experienced compassion and instructor is gone. He struggles with the ticket for ten minutes while a long line of people wait their turn, shifting position restlessly and staring intently at him. When the experienced agent returns, the novice says, “I was looking for you. You are supposed to be my instructor.” The instructor answers ironically, “Gee, I am really sorry, I feel so bad,” and both laugh together. The experienced agent is not sorry that he was not available to help the novice. His apparently misfitting feeling does not put him in debt, however, because the more general feeling rule—“We should both take this seriously”—is poked fun at. His meaning seems to be this: “Do not take it personally that I did not feel guilty or regretful about my late return. Neither of us really wants to be here because it is an awful job, and you understand how I appreciate that ten-minute break.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Irony is composed of just such playing with perspectives—now mine, now yours, now the company’s. It is the jazz of human exchange. As in improvisational music, in order to play with some perspectives, others have to be fundamentally understood and occasionally acknowledged. This is why humour and irony are often reserved for later stages of an acquaintanceship because they acknowledge a deep bond that can be played with. Sometimes improvisational exchanges themselves become crystallized into custom. A graduate student of mine from the Untied Kingdom once gave me two masks with wildly happy eyes and broad smiles. These masks, he explained, where used by European royalty when confronting their parents on specified occasions; holding the smiling masks over their faces, they were fee to voice their complaints at them. The masks paid the emotional respect due to the King and Queen and left the children free to respectfully say what they feel uneasy about. Empowering leaders bring joy, enthusiasm, and optimism to the World of those they touch, every day. Empowering leaders are proactive, inspiring, and willing to take the initiative. Empowering leaders have the ability to both give and get authority and the responsibility necessary to improve performance on every level. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless one transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty. Hence the right of the strongest, which, though to all seeming meant ironically, is really laid down as a fundamental principle. However, are we never to have an explanation of the phrase? Force is a physical power, and I fail to see what moral effect it can have. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will—at most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty? Suppose for a moment that this so-called “right” exists. I maintain that the sole result is a mass of inexplicable nonsense. For, if force creates right, the effect changes with the cause: every force that is greater than the first succeeds to its right. As soon as it is possible to disobey with impunity, disobedience is legitimate; and, the strongest being always in the right, the only thing that maters is to act so as to become the strongest. However, what kind of right is that which perishes when force fails? If we must obey perforce, there is no need to obey because we ought; and if we are not forced to obey, we are under no obligation to do so. Clearly, the word “right” adds nothing to force: in this connection, it means absolutely nothing. Obey the powers that be. If this means yield to force, it is a good precept, but superfluous: I can answer for its never being violated. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

All power comes from God, I admit; but so does all sickness: does that mean that we are forbidden to call in the doctor? A brigand surprises me at the edge of a wood: must I not merely surrender my purse on compulsion; but, even if I could withhold it, am I in conscience bound to give it up? For certainly the pistol he holds is also a power. Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers. In that case, my original question recurs. The spirit is never at rest. Bodily changes and movements not manifestly influenced by the external senses—growth, maintenance of body functions, and decay—are explained by the natural powers of the spirit. The material nature of spirit is something like that of a particle, and particles possess powers of giving and receiving, the chief forms of attraction being appetite and consent. All kinds of change, movement, and behaviour must ultimately rely on sense activity or on something analogous to it. The spirit is assigned to sensory function in organic process. In inorganic processes, the lifeless spirit acts as if it has sensory power. In all human behaviour of which people can become conscious, the basic data of experience is undoubtedly supplied by the sense. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

If an individual remains fiercely loyal to another being, their friendship will grow. People make oaths not to harm their friends. Loyalty is indispensable to the survival of friendship. How many once-prosperous friendships have faded because of disloyal talk? I set this down as fact, that is all men knew what each other said of the other, there would not be four friends in the World. You will never know a deep friendship unless there is mutual loyalty and trust. When all the World is plotting against you, a friend will help you find strength in God. A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. A friend’s encouragement means more than everything is going to be okay. One will strengthen your hand in God. This undoubtedly involves instruction, prayer, and mutual worship. God will also offer comfort to the downcast so that one’s joy will be greater than ever and this can all be hastened by the golden touch of an encouraging friend. The elements catalogued in a beautiful friendship are—mutuality, love, commitment, loyalty, and encouragement. Repeated mutual commitment began to mark the friendship of remarkable people. There should also be the apex of commitment with the mutual promise to care for one another’s family, should one be taken—“I will take care of yours, and you take care of mine.” Friend bind their lives and their children’s lives to one another, and this creates unexpected heights of devotion. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Male friendship has reached Heaven when men make such promises to each other. I treasure a sacred moment when my old childhood friend, married and with family, met my wife and me on vacation in the Colorado mountains and said, after a late-evening meal, “If anything happens to you, Edward, Sarah and I will look out for Katherine and the children.” It was a sacredness I gladly reciprocated. Some men believe that their friendships are more wonderful than the love of men. Some believe that this is because the marriage is not good and monogamous, and is a testimony of the poverty of one’s relationship with one’s wives, an inevitable result of the sin of multiplying wives. However, there is no hint of sensuality here, but simply a celebration of a deep friendship—one’s mutuality of soul, one’s commitment, one’s loyalty, and one’s encouragement—elements one would never know in any other relationship. This is what deep friendships should be. Friendship is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all others. This is certainly what the friendship of David and Jonathan in the Bible does for us. It reveals the beauties that can be ours in a deep male relationship grounded in God and sets the standards for all deep friendships. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Confirm, O Lord, we pray Thee, the hearts of Thy children, and strengthen them with the power of Thy grace; that they may both be devout in prayer to Thee, and sincere in love for each other; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O, God, Who makest all things profitable to them that love Thee, grant to our heart an invincible power of love, that the desires which have been convinced by Thine inspiration may not be changed by any temptation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “Most dear and precious above all things is chastity and virtue. I recommend thee unto God, and I trust in Christ that thou wilt be saved; and I pray unto God that he will spare thy life, to witness the return of his people unto him.” reports Moroni 9.9 and 22. Dear God, Thou Creator, upholder, proprietor of all things, I cannot escape from thy presence or control, nor do I desire to do so. My privilege is to be under the agency of omnipotence, righteousness, wisdom, patience, mercy, grace. Thou art love with more than parental affection; I admire thy heart, adore thy wisdom, stand in awe of thy power, abase myself before thy purity. It is the discovery of thy goodness alone that can banish fear, allure me into thy presence, help me to bewail and confess my sins. When I review my past guilt and am conscious of my present unworthiness I tremble to come to thee, I whose foundation is in the dust, I who have condemned thy goodness, defied by power, trampled upon thy love, rendered myself worthy of eternal death. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

However, in my recovery cannot spring from any cause in me, I can destroy but cannot save myself. Yet thou has laid help on One that is mighty, for there is mercy with thee, and exceeding riches in thy kindness through Jesus. May I always feel my need of him. Let thy restored joy be my strength; may it keep me from lusting after the World, bear up heart and mind in loss of comforts, enliven me in the valley of death, work in me the image of the Heavenly, and give me to enjoy the first fruits of spirituality, such as Angels and departed saints know. Give strength, O Lord, to those who seek Thee, and continually pour into their souls the holy desire of seeking Thee; that they who long to see Thy face may no crave the World’s pernicious pleasure. Abba, Father, fulfill the office of Thy Name towards Thy servants; do Thou govern, protect, preserve, sanctify, guide, console them; let them be so enkindled with love for Thee, that they may not be despised by Thee, O most merciful Lord, most tender Father! Just as Jesus was in reality greater than the rabbis whose unquestioned authority dominated the people of Israel, so any being today who reflects in all its purity God’s light, unshadowed by one’s personal opinions, is in reality greater than the impressively robed dignitaries of Church and State. Remember that time is money. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Slaves Lose Everything in their Chains, Even the Desire of Escaping from them!

February 17, 2020 3:17 am

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. Our chief want is discovering God, getting to know our soul, and allowing these divine elements to inspire us be greater than we ever knew was possible. How mysterious a baby is, its personality still largely potential, and how helpless. Yet how powerfully it reaches out to us and touches the heart—for sustenance and for the relief of its distresses, but also for recognition. A baby seems to reach out for validation and confirmation that it is already a person. And we respond. We respond and recognize and validate. Fear, pain, loss, and hate may be part of a baby’s everyday experiences. How can it manage such feelings, helpless as it is? It cannot—that is what the adults are for. The fortunate infant has adults whose care goes beyond managing its appetites and distresses. Such a baby will still be subject to misery and terror—we all are—but it will meet them in a context of love and acceptance. Its pains and rages will be surrounded, contained, and modified by memories of joy and bliss, and by expectations of more happiness to come. Indeed, I shall argue that memories of bliss are converted into expectations of bliss, as also, alas, memories of distress turn into expectations of more grief. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Good memories give a baby a better chance of continuing to feel appealing and acceptable in all circumstances, in sorrow as well as joy, when it is bad as well as when it is good. The infant is helpless. It is the adult who mainly provides the context of its experiences. For a context within which the infant can hold on to its experiences and not be devastated by them when they are bad, the infant needs adults who, consciously or unconsciously, understand how the baby feels. Adults who recognize the depths of their baby’s feelings, good and bad, give solidity to that baby’s experience of its. Such recognition helps consolidate the baby’s integrity and sense of self: its identity. Joyous recognition will encourage a joyous identity. I shall be suggesting that there is a strong connection between the way adults see a child, and behave toward it, and the child’s identity (that is the way the child sees itself and feels about itself), and the basic structures of its personality. The very structures of the personality are determined by early experiences. Differences between adults, differences in the nature of our feelings, and in our need for others, and in our relationships with others, have roots in the different ways in which our minds are structured. If the mind is a structure, what is it a structure of? #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

I shall argue that there is more than one good way of being an integrated person with a unique identity, self-image, and personality-structure. For instance, we often tend, in our culture, to think of ourselves as rather like a computer or a BMW M760Li Ultimate Driving Machine, or a calculate something, or take us somewhere. In this phantasy we may include a driver to keep the motor car moving towards our objective, or we may think of our machine as self-starting and self-motivated but, essentially, we assume that there is a point in being what we are an that we should be organized around that point. However, as far as some of us are concerned, our experience of ourselves may be much more like a landscape, a stormy and volcanic one or a quiet one with hills, hedges, meadows, rivers, roads, and settlements—many varied features in specific relationships with one another, and integrated, but not organized in any obvious purposeful way. Our love and recognition of a child may also lean more to one or other of these models. Is the child a BMW M5 Ultimate Driving Machine to us or a landscape? The child’s experience of itself—its self-image and indeed the very structure of its personality—will be affected accordingly (though not necessarily in ways we intend). In all these processes and influences, words are unimportant. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

What happens between adult and infant is no primarily conversational or intellectual apprehensions. If we needed words to appreciate a landscape, how poor we would be! And how hard it is to put our appreciation into words. The non-verbal nature of infant experience is similarly hard to apprehend and put into words. This makes it easy to neglect the non-verbal elements from which our personality is built up. In order to carry conviction when writing of our non-verbal life, I have had to lay some solid foundations. In the fascinating area of neurophysiology, we can find the elements which will eventually combine into the more recognizable psychological structures which we call thoughts, words, feelings, images, symbols, emotions, motives. Each of these is a structure of more basic elements. Infants are essentially disabled because by being born into a World which its neurophysiology cannot cope with. However, the human infant is, relatively speaking, quite sophisticated and complex by the time it experiences itself as separate from others. How are we to think of the human experience? What are its basic units? What is an integrated person? What is it that integrates? How are we to describe the differences between the integrity of a BMW Ultimate Driving Machine and the integrity of a landscape? What does it means to be an individual? When is differentiation mere lack of integration and when is it accurate and useful individuation? #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Once this is clarified, our focus can finally come to rest on recognizable adult experiences, albeit on those adult experiences, albeit on those adult experiences in which the effects of our childhood are very apparent. Whether we are structured more like motor cars or more like landscapes, we are composed of discernibly different parts or aspects. How can these become integrated into a more or less unified composition? And how can we conceptualize the relationships between them which would integrate them in this way? The concept of “networks” brings us very nearly to a complete answer. Networks may be organized with a centre to them, or without a centre, or with more than one centre. So may we. Networks may operate simultaneously at different levels of complexity. Networks of nerve-cells are shown to build up into organizations of great complexity and power. As far as we know, without processes in there are no psychological processes. This suggest that we should, if we can, try to theorize in conformity with what is thought to be characteristic of the human nervous system; this should set some limits to our speculations on how the mind works. To start with, we need to agree some brief definitions of basic words. The nervous system is made up of nerve-cells often called neurons. A nerve-cell has various parts to it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The nerve-cell body contains the nucleus and much else that provides for the life-process of the cell. The axon is the part of the cell which divides and branches into dendrites. “Dendron” is the Greek word for tree, and the dendrites look like tiny branching trees. At the end of each of the twigs is a little knob called the terminal button or synaptic knob. Nerve-cells converse with one another; the dendrites (and sometimes points on the skin of the cell body) receive these neural messages. The axon carries the messages from the nerve-ell to nerve-cell pass across a synapse, which joins the terminal buttons of the transmitting ell to points on the cell body or to the dendrites of the receiving cell. Messages are electrical in nature but they are not carried along the cells in the way a message travels down a telephone wire. They are transmitted by means of complex changes in the skin of the axon, which results in exchanges of carious chemicals constituents of the fluids inside and outside the axon. These exchanges produce alterations in electrical currents, and it is these which excite the cells into transmitting messages down the line. The terminal buttons of the axon have the special function, when a message is passed down the axon, of secreting a chemical—the transmitter substance. There are various transmitter substances, used by different kinds of nerve cells, some excitatory some inhibitory. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Transmitter substances are picked up by the receiving cell and produce effects there, either to excite or to inhibit transmission. These effects will play a part in determining whether messages will be sent on further down the line. Neurons can connect with other neurons in long chains or in more sophisticated ways. This allows quite complex experiences to come to be organized, through the simultaneous transmission of separate messages which get combined somewhere along the lone. So Turkish Delight can come to smell, look, feel, and taste delicious (at least to those of us who like it) all at the same time. Interlinked messages produce a sorting or coding or editing of stimuli. To begin with what is perhaps its most elementary function, the idealized image substitutes for realistic self-confidence and realistic pride. A person who eventually becomes neurotic has little chance to build up initial self-confidence because of the crushing experiences one has been subjected to. Such self-confidence as one may have is further weakened in the course of one’s neurotic development because they very conditions indispensable for self-confidence are apt to be destroyed. It is difficult to formulate these conditions briefly. The most important factors are the aliveness and availability of one’s emotional energies, the development of authentic goals of one’s own, and the faculty of being an active instrument in one’s own life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

However, a neurosis develops, just these things are liable to be damaged. Neurotic trends impair self-determination because a person is then driven instead f being oneself the driver. Moreover, the neurotic’s capacity to determine one’s own paths is continually weakened by one’s dependence upon people, whatever form this may have assumed—blind rebellion, blind craving to excel, and a blind need to keep away from others are all forms of dependence. Further, by inhibiting great sectors of emotional energy, one puts them completely out of action. All of these factors make it nearly impossible for one to develop one’s own goals. Last but not least, the basic conflict makes one divided in one’s own house. Being thus deprived of a substantial foundation, the neurotic must inflate one’s feeling of significance and power. That is why a belief in one’s omnipotence is a never-failing component of the idealized image. A second function is closely linked with the first. The neurotic does not feel weak in a vacuum but in a World peopled with enemies ready to cheat, humiliate, enslaved, and defeat one. One must therefore constantly measure and compared oneself with others, not for reasons of vanity or caprice but by bitter necessity. And since at the bottom one feels weak and contemptible—as we shall see later on—one must search for something that will make one feel better, more worthy than others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Whether it takes the form of feeling more saintly or more ruthless, more loving or more cynical, one must in one’s own mind feel superior in some way—regardless of any particular drive to excel. For the most part such a need contains elements of wanting to triumph over others, because no matter what the structure of the neurosis there is always vulnerability and a readiness to feel looked down on and humiliated. The need for vindictive triumph as an antidote to feeling humiliated may be acted upon or may exist mainly in the neurotic’s own mind; it may be conscious or unconscious, but it is one of the driving forces in the neurotic need for superiority and gives it its special colouring. The competitive spirit of this civilization is not only conducive to fostering neuroses in general, through the disturbance in human relationships it creates, but it also specifically feeds this need for pre-eminence. Laboratory experiments have tended mainly to use examples from the visual and cognitive side of human experience (and from the behavioural side or animal experience), yet messages about feelings are also continually coming in, and form an element of many experiences. It is therefore worth looking in a little more detail at the neurophysiology of emotional experience. In some respects, feelings are registered just like sights, sounds, and smells. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

What are commonly called the senses—vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch, and so on—depend on specialized sensory nerve-cells, often concentrated at one end in an organ like the eye or the ear. The cells become active when something from outside the animal produces the stimulus which activates that particular kind of sensory cell. These cells and their immediately following cells are called “exteroceptors” (extero for outside, captor for receptor). We know more about ourselves and about the World than the exteroceptors convey. There are specialized nerve-cells, related not to external stimuli but to something internal. We know, for instance, whether we are standing on one leg or two, whether our fist is clenched or not. We know this from other specialized nerve-cells called “interceptors” and “proprioceptors”, which give information, not about the World but about such things as the amount of tension in a muscle or the amount of a hormone in the blood. Partly through these, we know how we feel: tense or relaxed, alert or sleepy, joyous or sad, satisfied or uncomfortable. There is of course more to feelings than this, and we will look at it in greater detail at a later time—here we are just looking at the neurophysiological process involved. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

In Jesus’s own ministry he came proclaiming access to the kingdom of God: to God’s present care and supervision, available to all through confidence in oneself. “Repent, for life in the kingdom of the Heavens is now available to you,” was what one said. And his presence, actions, and teachings manifested and explained the kingdom. He made “disciples” by presenting them with the kingdom and introducing them into it by reaching their hearts, changing their vision of reality and their intensions for life. Consider one of his “parables of the kingdom”: “The kingdom of the Heavens is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man fund and concealed it. He was ecstatic. He sol d everything he had and bought the field,” reports Matthew 13.44. Imagine that you discovered gold or oil in a certain property and no one else knew about it. Can you see yourself being sad and feeling deprived for having to gather all your resources and sacrifice them in order to buy that property? Hardly! Now you know what it is like to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus! Some pain is included, no doubt, because the old attachments are still there in our hearts and lives. They never all disappear at once. And we may experience some uncertainty from time to time, especially at the start. However, the progress of spiritual formation will soon take care of that. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The new vision becomes an attachment and takes on an ever greater reality as we progress; and that, in turn, pushes the old attachments toward the exits of our lives—which we then are not sad to see go. Indeed we are happy about it. We come to want to not want what we now want, and to want to not think of what now lives before our mind; and we come to want to be made willing for what we are not now really willing. So the self-denial of Matthew 16.24 and elsewhere in the Gospels is always the surrender of a lesser, dying self for a greater eternal one—the person God intended in creating you. Confidence in this is the occasion of “greatly rejoicing, with joy unspeakable and full of glory,” reports 1 Peter 1.8. Jesus does not deny us personal fulfillment, but shows us the only true way to it. In him we find out life. He would keep us from selling our birthright as creatures in God’s image—a birthright of genuine goodness, sufficiency, and power for which we are fitted by nature—for a mere bowl of soup (Genesis 25.30-31): perhaps a little illicit pleasures of the flesh, money, reputation, power, self-righteousness, and so forth—“the pleasures of sin for a season”—or for the mere promise or possibility of such. The “cross” we must take is laid upon all obsessive partial desires, so that that broad reach agape love can integrate for us a while and eternal life with God and man. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Jesus was not some harsh ascetic who practiced or imposed pain for its own sake. He did not choose death because it was good in itself, but “for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross and despised the shame,” reports Hebrews 12.2. To take him as our master means that we trust his way is right and, as he himself did, always look to the larger good under God. Like him we keep on entrusting ourselves to the One who judges righteously (1 Peter 2.23). This is “losing our life and thereby saving it: in the manner Jesus taught. I mean to inquire if, in the civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration, humans being taken as they are and laws as they might be. In this inquiry I shall endeavour always to unite what right sanctions with what is prescribed by interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be divided. I enter upon my task without proving the importance of the subject. I shall be asked if I am a prince or a legislator, to write on politics. As I was born a citizen of a free State, member of the Sovereign, I feel that, however feeble the influence my voice can have on public affairs, the right of voting on them makes it my duty to study them: and I am happy, when I reflect upon governments, to find my inquiries always furnish me with new reasons for living that of my own country. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Humans are born free; and everywhere one is in chains. One thinks oneself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer. If took into account only force, and the effects derived from it, I should say: “As long as people is compelled to obey, and obeys, it does well; as soon as it can shake off the yoke, and shakes it off, it does still better; for, regaining its liberty by the same right as took it away, either it is justified in resuming it, or there was no justification for those who took it away.” But the social order is a sacred right which is the basis of all others rights. Nevertheless, this right does not come from nature, and must therefore be founded on conventions. Before coming to that, I have to prove what I have just asserted. The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural is the family: and even so the children remain attached to the father only so long as they need him for their preservation. As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children, released from the obedience they owed to the fathers, and the father, released from the care he owed his children, return equally to independence. If they remain united, they continue so no longer naturally, but voluntarily; and the family itself is then maintained only by convention. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

This common liberty results from the nature of humans. Their first law is to provide for one’s own preservation, one’s first cares are those which one owes to oneself; and, as soon as one reaches years of discretion, one is the sole judge of the proper means of preserving oneself, and consequently becomes one’s own master. The family then may be called the first model of political societies: the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children; and all, being born free and equal, alienate their liberty for their own advantage. The whole difference is that, in the family, the love of the father one’s children repays him for the care he takes of them, while, in the State, the pleasure of commanding takes the place of the love which the chief cannot have for the peoples under hum. Grotius denies that all human power is established in favour of the governed, and quotes slavery as an example. His usual method of reasoning is constantly to establish right fact. It would be possible to employ a more logical method, but none could be more favourable to tyrants. It is then, according to Grotius, doubtful whether the human race belongs to a hundred men, or that hundred men to the human race: and, he seems to incline to the former alternative, which is also the view of Hobbes. On this showing, the human species is divided into so many herds of cattle, each with its ruler, who keeps guard over them for the purpose of devouring them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

As a shepherd is of a nature superior to that of his flock, the shepherds of men, for instance, their rulers, as of a nature superior to that of the peoples under them. Thus, Philo tells us, the Emperor Caligula reasoned, concluding equally well either that kings were gods, or that men were beasts. The reasoning of Caligula agrees with that of Hobbes and Grotius. Aristotle, before any of them, had said that men are by no means equal naturally, but that some are born for slavery, and others for dominion. Aristotle was right; but he took the effect for the cause. Nothing can be more certain than that every person born in slavery is born for slavery. Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them: they love their servitude, as the democratic party seems to. For instance, while Governor of California, Gavin Newsom brags about the state of California having a $21 billion surplus of taxpayer money, there is a homeless crisis. In cities, like Oakland, and Los Angeles, parks are now becoming homeless camps. And in cities like Sacramento, while people are having a shortage of affordable housing, Mayor Darrel Steinberg is using hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to whip up unnecessary sports complexes and slapping together a $220 million expansion and renovation on the Convention Center and the Memorial Auditorium. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Remember, the new King’s area cost taxpayers about $300 million and only took about two years to put up. With over half a billion taxpayer dollars being spent on unnecessary entertainment in Sacramento, we should not have an affordable housing crisis, nor one single person sleeping on the street. However, no one will move to impeach democratic leaders for using and abusing taxpayers and their money. I guess it is true. Slaves love their servitude, as the comrades of Ulysses loved their brutish conditions. If then there are slaves by nature, it is because there have been slaves against nature. Force made the first slaves, and their cowardice perpetuated the condition. I have said noting of King Adam, or Emperor Noah, father of the three greatest monarchs who shared out the Universe, like the children of Saturn, whom some scholars have recognised in them. I trust to getting due thanks for my moderation; for, being a direct descendant of one of these princes, perhaps of the eldest branch, how do I know that a verification of titles might not leave me the legitimate king of the human race? In any case, there can be no doubt that Adam was sovereign of the World, as Robinson Crusoe was of his island, as long as he was its only inhabitant; and this empire had the advantage that the monarchs, safe on his throne, had no rebellions, wars, or conspirators to fear. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Merciful Lord, the Comforter and Teacher of Thy faithful people, increase in Thy Church the desires which Thou hast given, and confirm the hearts of those who hope in Thee by enabling them to understand the depth of Thy promises; that all Thine adopted sons may even now behold with the eyes of faith, and patiently wait for, the light which as yet Thou dost not openly manifest; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who hast taught Thy Church to keep all Thy Heavenly commandments by loving Thy Godhead and our neighbour; grant us the spirit of peace and grace, that Thy Universal family may be both devoted to Thee with their whole heart, and united to each other with a pure will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “My beloved son, I write unto you again that ye may know that I am yet alive; but I write somewhat of that which is grievous. Behold, I am labouring with them continually; and when I speak the word of God with sharpness they harden their hearts against it; wherefore, I fear lest the Spirit of the Lord hath ceased striving with them. For so exceedingly do they anger that it seemeth me that they have no fear of death; and they have lost their love, one towards another; and they thirst after blood and revenge continually,” reports Moroni 9.1 and 4-5. O Saviour of Sinners, Thy name is excellent, Thy glory high, Thy compassion unfailing, Thy condescension wonderful, Thy mercy tender. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

I bless thee for the discoveries invitations, promises of the gospel for in them is pardon for rebels, liberty for captives, health for the sick, homes for the homeless, salvation for the lost. I come to thee in thy beloved name of Jesus; re-impress thy image upon my soul; raise me above the smiles and frowns of the World, regarding it as a light thing to be judged by humans; may Thy approbation be my only aim, thy word my one rule. Make me to abhor that which grieves Thy Holy Spirit, to suspect consolations of a Worldly nature, to shun a careless way of life, to reprove evil, to instruct with meekness those who oppose me, to be gentle and patient toward all people, to be not only a professor but an example of the gospel displaying in every relation, office, and condition its excellency, loveliness and advantages. How little have I illustrated my principles and improved my privileges! How seldom I served my generation! How often have I injured and not recommended my redeemer! How few are those blessed through me! In many things I have offended, in all come short of Thy glory; pardon my iniquity, for it is great. “And now, my beloved son, notwithstanding their hardness, let us labour diligently; for if we should cease to labour, we should be brought under condemnation; for we have a labour to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay, that we may conquer the enemy of all righteousness, and rest our souls in the Kingdom of God,” reports Moroni 8.6. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Randolph Harris II International Institute

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